#jacques-louis-david

#jacques-louis-david

I found myself shedding tears in front of his 1784 history painting The Oath of the Horatii -an allegory of the virtues of fidelity and sacrificing oneself to a greater cause, produced by a future Jacobin on the eve of the French Revolution as an endorsement of Republicanism. Looking back, I wonder if I was not only lamenting the withering of civic ideals (and of post-Reagan civics education) in America, but also mourning David's conviction that visual art matters in the making of the world.