"Here is a confession: Since my early 20s, I have been in love with a terrorist. This is him. My No. 1 guy, my problematic fave: Jacques-Louis David, painter of the French Revolution and everything that came after. In the 1780s, David rocketed to the forefront of European painting with a severe new style of depiction. His ambitions led him all the way into a new government, which he served with lethal devotion."
"A painting of Socrates, about to drink the hemlock that will kill him. He sits on what appears to be a bed, near the center of the picture, surrounded by people draped in colorful cloth. Some look at him, while others look away or hold their heads in their hands. He wears a white cloth that bares his chest and stomach."
An 18th-century self-portrait depicts a painter seated in an upholstered wooden chair before a light gray wall, looking straight ahead with his body turned left. He holds a single paintbrush in one hand and additional brushes and a palette in the other, with smears of red, white, pink, and gray paint. A personal confession names Jacques-Louis David as a beloved yet problematic figure, describing him as a terrorist and celebrating his rise in the 1780s to the forefront of European painting. David served the new revolutionary government with lethal devotion and was later confined in 1794.
Read at www.nytimes.com
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