http://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Jacques-Louis_David

Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David (August 30, 1748 – December 29, 1825) was a highly influential
French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the prominent painter of the era.
In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from
Rococo frivolity toward a classical austerity and severity, chiming with the moral climate of
the final years of the ancien régime.

David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien
Robespierre, and was effectively a dictator of the arts under the French Republic.
Imprisoned after Robespierre's fall from power, he aligned himself with yet another political
regime upon his release, that of Napoleon I. It was at this time that he developed his
'Empire style', notable for its use of warm Venetian colours. David had a huge number of
pupils, making him the strongest influence in French art of the 19th century, especially
academic Salon painting.

Jacques-Louis David was born into a prosperous family in Paris on August 30, 1748. When
he was about nine his father was killed in a duel and his mother left him with his
prosperous architect uncles. They saw to it that he received an excellent education at the
Collège des Quatre-Nations, but he was never a good student: he had a tumor that
impeded his speech, and he was always preoccupied with drawing. He covered his
notebooks with drawings, and he once said, "I was always hiding behind the instructor’s
chair, drawing for the duration of the class". Soon, he desired to be a painter, but his uncles
and mother wanted him to be an architect. He overcame the opposition, and went to learn
from François Boucher, the leading painter of the time, who was also a distant relative.
Boucher was a Rococo painter, but tastes were changing, and the fashion for Rococo was
giving way to a more classical style. Boucher decided that instead of taking over David’s
tutelage, he would send David to his friend Joseph-Marie Vien, a mediocre painter, but one
who embraced the classical reaction to Rococo. There David attended the Royal Academy,
based in what is now the Louvre.

David attempted to win the Prix de Rome, an art scholarship to the French Academy in
Rome, four times between 1770 and 1774; once, he lost according to legend because he
had not consulted Vien, one of the judges. Another time, he lost because a few other
students had been competing for years, and Vien felt David's education could wait for these
other mediocre painters. In protest, he attempted to starve himself to death. Finally, in
1774, David won the Prix de Rome. Normally, he would have had to attend another school
before attending the Academy in Rome, but Vien's influence kept him out of it. He went to
Italy with Vien in 1775, as Vien had been appointed director of the French Academy at
Rome. While in Italy, David observed the Italian masterpieces and the ruins of ancient
Rome. David filled twelve sketchbooks with material that he would derive from for the rest
of his life. While in Rome, he studied great masters, and came to favor above all others
Raphael. In 1779, David was able to see the ruins of Pompeii, and was filled with wonder.
After this, he sought to revolutionize the art world with the "eternal" concepts of classicism.

[edit] Early work

David's fellow students at the academy found him difficult to get along with, but they
recognized his genius. David was allowed to stay at the French Academy in Rome for an
extra year, but after 5 years in Rome, he returned to Paris. There, he found people ready to
use their influence for him, and he was made a member of the Royal Academy. He sent the
Academy two paintings, and both were included in the Salon of 1781, a high honor. He was
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praised by his famous contemporary painters, but the administration of the Royal Academy
was very hostile to this young upstart. After the Salon, the King granted David lodging in
the Louvre, an ancient and much desired privilege of great artists. When the contractor of
the King's buildings, M. Pecol, was arranging with David, he asked the artist to marry his
daughter, Marguerite Charlotte. This marriage brought him money and eventually four
children. David had his own pupils, about 40 to 50, and was commissioned by the
government to paint "Horace defended by his Father", but Jacques soon decided, "Only in
Rome can I paint Romans." His father in law provided the money he needed for the trip,
and David headed for Rome with his wife and three of his students, one of whom, Jean-
Germain Drouais, was the Prix de Rome winner of that year.

Oath of the Horatii (1784)

In Rome, David painted his famous Oath of the Horatii. The themes and motifs would carry
on into his later works Oath of the Tennis Court and Distribution of Eagles. While Oath of
the Horatii and Oath of the Tennis Court stress the importance of masculine self-sacrifice for
one's country and patriotism, the Distribution of Eagles would ask for self-sacrifice for one's
Emperor (Napoleon) and the importance of battlefield glory.

In 1787, David did not become the Director of the French Academy in Rome, a position he
wanted dearly. The Count in charge of the appointments said David was too young, but said
he would support him in 6 to 12 years. This situation would be one of many that would
cause him to lash out at the Academy in years to come.

For the salon of 1787, David exhibited his famous Death of Socrates. "Condemned to death,
Socrates, strong, calm and at peace, discusses the immortality of the soul. Surrounded by
Crito, his grieving friends and students, he is teaching, philosophizing, and in fact, thanking
the God of Health, Asclepius, for the hemlock brew which will ensure a peaceful death… The
wife of Socrates can be seen grieving alone outside the chamber, dismissed for her
weakness. Plato (not present when Socrates died) is depicted as an old man seated at the
end of the bed." Critics compared the Socrates with Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling and
Raphael's Stanze, and one, after ten visits to the Salon, described it as "in every sense
perfect". Denis Diderot said it looked like he copied it from some ancient bas-relief. The
painting was very much in tune with the political climate at the time. For this painting,
David was not honored by a royal "works of encouragement".

For his next painting, David painted The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons. The
work had tremendous appeal for the time. Before the opening of the Salon, the French
Revolution had begun. The National Assembly had been established, and the Bastille had
fallen. The royal court did not want propaganda agitating the people, so all paintings had to
be checked before being hung. Some portraits of famous people were banned, like the

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portrait of a chemist who happened to be a member of an ill-favored party. When the
newspapers reported that the government had not allowed the showing of The Lictors Bring
to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, the people were outraged, and the royals gave in. The
painting was hung in the exhibition, protected by art students. The painting depicts Lucius
Junius Brutus, the Roman leader, grieving for his sons. Brutus's sons had attempted to
overthrow the government and restore the monarchy, so the father ordered their death to
maintain the republic. Thus, Brutus was the heroic defender of the republic, at the cost of
his own family. On the right, the Mother holds her two daughters, and the grandmother is
seen on the far right, in anguish. Brutus sits on the left, alone, brooding, but knowing what
he did was best for his country. The whole painting was a Republican symbol, and obviously
had immense meaning during these times in France.

[edit] The Revolution

In the beginning, David was a supporter of the Revolution, a friend of Robespierre and a
member of the Jacobin Club. While others were leaving the country for new and greater
opportunities, David stayed to help destroy the old order; he was a regicider who voted in
the National Assembly for the Execution of Louis XVI. It is uncertain why he did this, as
there were many more opportunities for him under the King than the new order; some
people suggest David's love for the classical made him embrace everything about that
period, including a republican government. Others believed that they found the key to the
artist's revolutionary career in his personality. Undoubtedly, David's artistic sensibility,
mercurial temperament, volatile emotions, ardent enthusiasm, and fierce independence
might have been expected to help turn him against the established order but they did not
fully explain his devotion to the republican regime. Nor did the vague statements of those
who insisted upon his "powerful ambition. . . and unusual energy of will” actually account
for his revolutionary connections. Those who knew him maintained that "generous ardor",
high-minded idealism and well meaning, though sometimes fanatical, enthusiasm rather
than selfishness and jealousy, motivated his activities during this period.

Soon, David turned his critical sights on Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. This
attack was probably caused primarily by the hypocrisy of the organization and their
personal opposition against his work, as seen in previous episodes in David’s life. The Royal
Academy was chock full of royalists, and David’s attempt to reform it did not go over well
with the members. However, the deck was stacked against this symbol of the old regime,
and the National Assembly ordered it to make changes to conform to the new constitution.

David then began work on something that would later hound him: propaganda for the new
republic. David’s painting of Brutus was shown during the play Brutus, by the famous
Frenchman, Voltaire. The people responded in an uproar of approval. On June 20, 1790, the
anniversary of the first act of defiance against the King, the oath of the tennis court was
celebrated. David was there Wanting to commemorate the event in a painting, the Jacobins,
revolutionaries that had taken to meeting in the Jacobin Monastery, decided that they would
choose the painter whose "genius anticipated the revolution". David accepted, and began
work on a mammoth canvas. The picture was never fully completed, because of its
immense size (35ft. by 36ft.) and because people that needed to sit for it disappeared in
the Reign of Terror, but several finished drawings exist and parts of the original canvas also
exist showing nude figures with fully painted heads.

When Voltaire died in 1778, the church denied him a church burial, and his body was
interred near a monastery. A year later, Voltaire’s old friends began a campaign to have his
body buried in the Panthéon, as church property had been confiscated by the French
Government. In 1791 David was appointed to head the organizing committee for the
ceremony, a parade through the streets of Paris to the Panthéon. Despite rain, and
opposition from conservatives based on the amount of money that was being spent, the
procession went ahead. Up to 100,000 people watched the "Father of the Revolution" be
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carried to his resting place. This was the first of many large festivals organized by David for
the republic. He went on to organize festivals for martyrs that died fighting royalists. These
funerals echoed the religious festivals of the pagan Greeks and Romans and are seen by
many as Saturnalian.

In 1791, the King attempted to flee the country and was within 30 miles of the Swiss
border when he had a hunger attack that led to his arrest and eventual execution. Louis XVI
had made secret requests to Emperor Joseph II of Austria, Marie-Antoinette's brother, to
restore him to his throne. This was granted and Austria threatened France if a the royal
couple were hurt. In reaction, the people arrested the King. This lead to an Invasion after
the trials and execution of Louis and Marie-Antoinette. The Bourbon monarchy was
destroyed by the French people in 1792—it would be restored after Napoleon, then
destroyed again with the Restoration of the House of Bonaparte. When the new National
Convention held its first meeting, David was sitting with his friends Jean-Paul Marat and
Robespierre. In the Convention, David soon earned a nickname "ferocious terrorist". Soon,
Robespierre’s agents discovered a secret vault of the king’s proving he was trying to
overthrow the government, and demanded his execution. The National Convention held the
trial of Louis XVI and David voted for the death of the King, which caused his wife, a
royalist, to divorce him.

When Louis XVI was executed on January 21, 1793, another man had already died as well
— Louis Michel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau. Le Peletier was killed on the preceding day by
a royal bodyguard, in revenge for having voted the death of the King. David was called
upon to organize a funeral, and he painted Le Peletier Assassinated. In it the assassin’s
sword was seen hanging by a single strand of horsehair above Le Peletier's body, a concept
inspired by the proverbial ancient tale of the sword of Damocles, which illustrated the
insecurity of power and position. This underscored the courage displayed by Le Peletier and
his companions in routing an oppressive king. The sword pierces a piece of paper on which
is written ‘I vote the death of the tyrant’, and as a tribute at the bottom right of the picture
David placed the inscription ‘David to Le Peletier. 20 January 1793’. The painting was later
destroyed by Le Peletier's royalist daughter, and is known only by a drawing, an engraving,
and contemporary accounts. Nevertheless, this work was important in David's career,
because it was the first completed painting of the French Revolution, made in less then
three months, and a work through which he initiated the regeneration process that would
continue with The Death of Marat, David's masterpiece.

On the 13th of July 1793, David's friend Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday with a
knife she had hidden in her clothing. She gained entrance to Marat's house on the pretense
of presenting him a list of people who should be executed as enemies of France. Marat
thanked her and said that they would be guillotined next week upon which Charlotte
immediately fatally stabbed him. Charlotte was guillotined shortly thereafter. Charlotte was
of an opposing political party, whose name can be seen in the note Marat holds in David's
subsequent painting, The Death of Marat. Marat, a member of the National Assembly and a
journalist responsible for the deaths of many people who were innocent, had a skin disease
that caused him to itch horribly. The only relief he could get was in his bath over which he
improvised a desk to write his poisonous list of names of people to be executed for
supposed crimes against the state. David once again organized a spectacular funeral, and
Marat was buried in the Panthéon. Marat died in the bathtub, writing. David wanted to have
his body submerged in the bathtub during the funeral procession, but the body had begun
to putrefy. Instead, Marat’s body was periodically sprinkled with water as the people came
to see his corpse, complete with gaping wound. The Death of Marat, perhaps David's most
famous painting, has been called the Pietà of the revolution. Upon presenting the painting
to the convention, he said "Citizens, the people were again calling for their friend; their
desolate voice was heard: David, take up your brushes.., avenge Marat... I heard the voice
of the people. I obeyed." David had to work quickly, but the result was a simple and
powerful image.
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After executing the King, war broke out between the new Republic and virtually every major
power in Europe, and the wars France fought went very poorly. The Committee of Public
Safety was headed by Robespierre, who came to be virtual dictator of the country, and set
grain prices for Paris who set about a reign of Terror. The committee was severe; Marie
Antoinette went to the guillotine, an event recorded in a famous sketch by David. Portable
guillotines killed failed generals, aristocrats, priests and perceived enemies. David organized
his last festival: the festival of the Supreme Being. Robespierre had realized what a
tremendous propaganda tool these festivals were, and he decided to create a new religion,
mixing moral ideas with the republic, based on the ideas of Rousseau, with Robespierre as
the new high priest. This process had already begun by confiscating church lands and
requiring priests to take an oath to the state. The festivals, called fêtes, would be the
method of indoctrination. On the appointed day, 20 Prairial by the revolutionary calendar,
Robespierre spoke, descended steps, and with a torch presented to him by David,
incinerated a cardboard image symbolizing atheism, revealing an image of wisdom
underneath. The festival hastened the "Incorruptible's" downfall. Later, some see David’s
methods as being taken up by Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler. These massive propaganda
events brought the people together. France tried to have festivals in the United States, but
soon received word that "to tell the truth, these methods, excellent in France where the
mass of the people take part, have here only a shabby air."

Soon, the war began to go well; French troops marched across Belgium, and the emergency
that had placed the Committee of Public Safety in control was no more. Then, plotters
seized Robespierre at the National Convention and guillotined him which ended the reign of
terror in which thousands of people had been innocently executed with little more than a
kangaroo court whose determination to execute the accused was a foregone conclusion
even before the accused was brought before them. During this seizure, David yelled to his
friend "if you drink hemlock, I shall drink it with you." After this, he supposedly fell ill, and
did not attend the evening session because of "stomach pain", which saved him from being
guillotined along with Robespierre. David was arrested and placed in prison. There he
painted his own portrait, showing him much younger then he actually was, as well as that
of his jailer.

[edit] Post Revolution

After David’s wife visited him in jail, he conceived the idea of telling the story of the Sabine
Women. The Sabine Women Enforcing Peace by Running between the Combatants, also
called The Intervention of the Sabine Women is said to have been painted to honor his wife,
with the theme being love prevailing over conflict. The painting was also seen as a plea for
the people to reunite after the bloodshed of the revolution.

This work also brought him to the attention of Napoleon. The story for the painting is as
follows: "The Romans have abducted the daughters of their neighbors, the Sabines. To
avenge this abduction, the Sabines attacked Rome, although not immediately—since
Hersilia, the daughter of Tatius, the leader of the Sabines, had been married to Romulus,
the Roman leader, and then had two children by him in the interim. Here we see Hersilia
between her father and husband as she adjures the warriors on both sides not to take wives
away from their husbands or mothers away from their children. The other Sabine Women
join in her exhortations." During this time, the martyrs of the revolution were taken from
the Pantheon and buried in common ground, and revolutionary statues were destroyed.
When he was finally released to the country, France had changed. His wife managed to get
David released from prison, and he wrote letters to his former wife, and told her he never
ceased loving her. He remarried her in 1796. Finally, wholly restored to his position, he
retreated to his studio, took pupils and retired from politics.

[edit] Napoleon

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In one of history's great coincidences, David's close association with the Committee of
Public Safety during the Terror resulted in his signing of the death warrant for one
Alexandre de Beauharnais, a minor noble. De Beauharnais's widow, Rose-Marie Josephe de
Tascher de Beauharnais would later be known to the world as Josephine Bonaparte,
Empress of the French. It was her coronation by her husband, Napoleon I, that David
depicted so memorably in the Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine, 2 December 1804.

David had been an admirer of Napoleon from their first meeting, struck by the then-General
Bonaparte's classical features. Requesting a sitting from the busy and impatient general,
David was able to sketch Napoleon in 1797. David recorded the conqueror of Italy's face,
but the full composition of General Bonaparte holding the peace treaty with Austria remains
unfinished. Napoleon had high esteem for David, and asked him to accompany him to Egypt
in 1798, but David refused, claiming he was too old for adventuring and sending instead his
student, Antoine-Jean Gros.

After Napoleon's successful coup d'etat in 1799, as First Consul he commissioned David to
commemorate his daring crossing of the Alps. The crossing of the St. Bernard Pass had
allowed the French to surprise the Austrian army and win victory at the Battle of Marengo
on June 14, 1800. Although Napoleon had crossed the Alps on a mule, he requested that he
be "portrayed calm upon a fiery horse". David complied with Napoleon Crossing the Saint-
Bernard. After the proclamation of the Empire in 1804, David became the official court
painter of the regime.

One of the works David was commissioned for was The Coronation of Napoleon in Notre
Dame. David was permitted to watch the event. He had plans of Notre Dame delivered and
participants in the coronation came to his studio to pose individually, though never the
Emperor (the only time David obtained a sitting from Napoleon had been in 1797). David
did manage to get a private sitting with the Empress Josephine and Napoleon's sister,
Caroline Murat, through the intervention of erstwhile art patron, Marshal Joachim Murat, the
Emperor's brother-in-law. For his background, David had the choir of Notre Dame act as his
fill-in characters. The Pope came to sit for the painting, and actually blessed David.
Napoleon came to see the painter, stared at the canvas for an hour and said "David, I salute
you". David had to redo several parts of the painting because of Napoleon's various whims,
and for this painting, David received only 24,000 Francs.

[edit] Exile

After the Bourbons returned to power, David was on the list of proscribed former
revolutionaries and Bonapartists, as he had voted for the execution of Louis XVI and
probably had something to do with the death of Louis XVII. Mistreated and starved, Louis
XVII had been forced to confess to an incestous relationship, while in prison, with his
mother, Marie-Antoinette. (This allegation helped to guillotine her, but it was a lie as Louis
was separated from his mother and not allowed to see her.) The new Bourbon King, Louis
XVIII, however, granted David amnesty and even offered him a position as a court painter.
David refused this offer, preferring instead to seek a self-imposed exile in Brussels. There,
he painted Cupid and Psyche and lived out the last days of his life quietly with his wife,
whom he had remarried. During this time, he largely devoted his efforts to smaller-scale
paintings of mythological scenes and to portraits of Bruxellois and Napoleonic emigres, such
as the Baron Gerard.

His last great work, Mars Disarmed by Venus and the Three Graces was begun in 1822 and
was finished the year before his death. "David wanted to outdo himself once more. In
December 1823, he wrote: "This is the last picture I want to paint, but I want to surpass
myself in it. I will put the date of my 75 years on it and afterwards I will never again pick
up my brush." The subject is taken from Greek mythology…David was faithful to the
legend… The coloring is translucent and pearly, like painting on porcelain." The painting was
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first shown in Brussels and then was sent to Paris, where David's former students flocked to
see the painting. The exhibit managed to bring in after operating costs, 13,000 francs,
meaning there were more than 10,000 visitors, a huge amount for the time.

When David was leaving the theater, he was hit by a carriage and later died of deformations
to the heart in December 29, 1825. After his death, some of his portrait paintings were sold
at auction in Paris, with his paintings going for very small sums. His famous painting of
Marat was shown in a special secluded room so as not to outrage the public. David’s body
was not allowed to return to France, despite pleas of his family, because of David's part in
the execution of Louis XVI and was therefore buried in Brussels, but his heart was buried at
Père Lachaise, Paris.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_the_Horatii

Oath of the Horatii

Oath of the Horatii (1784) is a painting by Jacques-Louis David, painted before the French
Revolution, depicting the Roman salute. The theme of the painting has an extreme patriotic
and neoclassical perspective; it later became a model work for future painters. The painting
augmented David's fame, and allowed him to rear his own students.

[edit] Symbolic theme

The painting depicts the Roman Horatii, who according to Titus Livius' Ab Urbe Condita
(From the Founding of the City) were male triplets destined to wage war against the
"Curiatii," who were also male triplets, in order to settle disputes between the Romans and
the city of Alba Longa. As revolution in France loomed, paintings urging loyalty to the state
rather than to clan or clergy abounded. Although it was painted nearly five years before the
revolution in France, the Oath of the Horatii became one of the defining images of the time.

In the painting, the three brothers express their loyalty and solidarity with Rome before
battle, wholly supported by their father. These are men willing to lay down their lives out of
patriotic duty. In this patriarchal society, the steely men, with their resolute gaze and taut,
outstretched limbs are citadels of republican patriotism. They are symbols of the highest
virtues of the Republic, even as the tender-hearted women lay home weeping and
mourning, content to wait.

The mothers and sisters are shown clothed in silken garments seemingly melting into
tender expressions of sorrow. Their despair is partly explained by the fact that one sister
was engaged to one of the Curiatii and another is a sister of the Curiatii, married to one of
the Horatii. Upon defeat of the Curiatii, the remaining Horatius journeyed home to find his
sister cursing Rome over the death of her fiancé. He killed her, horrified that Rome was
7
being cursed. Originally David had intended to depict this episode, and a drawing survives
showing the surviving Horatius raising his sword, with his sister lying dead. David later
decided that this subject was too gruesome a way of sending the message of public duty
overcoming private feeling, but his next major painting depicted a similar scene - Lucius
Junius Brutus brooding as the bodies of his sons, whose executions for treason he had
ordered, are returned home.

The painting shows the three brothers on the left, the Horatii father in the center and the
sister/wives on the right. Starting from the left, the Horatii brothers, there are the three of
them swearing upon (saluting) their swords as they take their oath. As members of a
patriarchal society, the men show no sense of emotion. Even the father shows no emotions.
He holds up three swords. On the right, there are three women weeping, one in the back
and two up closer. The woman dressed in the white is a Horatii sister weeping for both her
fiancée and her brother, as the one dressed in brown is a Curiatii sister who weeps for her
husband and her brother. The woman in black in the back is holding two children of one of
the Horatii husband and the Curiatii wife. The younger daughter hides her face in her
nanny’s dress as the son refuses to have his eyes shielded.

"This painting occupies an extremely important place in the body of David’s work and
in the history of French painting. The story was taken from Livy. We are in the period
of the wars between Rome and Alba, in 669 B.C. It has been decided that the dispute
between the two cities must be settled by an unusual form of combat to be fought by
two groups of three champions each. The two groups are the three Horatii brothers
and the three Curiatii brothers. The drama lay in the fact that one of the sisters of
the Curiatii, Sabina, is married to one of the Horatii, while one of the sisters of the
Horatii, Camilla, is betrothed to one of the Curiatii. Despite the ties between the two
families, the Horatii's father exhorts his sons to fight the Curiatii and they obey,
despite the lamentations of the women." [1]

[edit] Symbolic technique

This painting shows the neoclassical art style, and employs various techniques that were
typical for it:

• The background is deemphasized, while the figure in the foreground are emphasized
to show their importance.
• The use of dull colors is to show the importance of the story behind the painting over
the painting itself.
• The picture is clearly organized, depicting the symbolism of the number three and of
the moment itself.
• The focus on clear, hard details and the lack of use of the more wispy brushstrokes
preferred by Rococo art.
• The brushstrokes are invisible, to show that the painting is more important compared
to the artist
• The frozen quality of the painting is also intended to emphasize rationality, unlike the
Rococo style.
• The only emotion shown is from the women, who were allowed to feel, while it was
for the men to do their duty.
• The fact that it also depicts a morally complex or disturbing story lends to its
classification as a neoclassical work.

Reception

Priests, cardinals, princes and princesses came to see David’s incredible work, eulogies
were created for the painting, and even the Pope wanted to see The Oath. David wanted

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the painting in the Salon, but it arrived late, and was hung in a bad position by people
opposed to David at the Academy. Finally, public uproar made it necessary to move the
painting to a better position.[citation needed]