The Death of Marat
Jacques-Louis David (1793)
<strong>The Death of Marat</strong> turns a private murder into a <strong>secular martyrdom</strong>: Marat’s idealized body slumps in a bath, a pleading letter in his hand, a quill slipping from the other beside a bloodied knife and inkwell. Against a vast dark void, David’s calm light and austere geometry elevate humble objects—the green baize plank and the crate inscribed “À MARAT, DAVID, L’AN DEUX”—into civic emblems <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[2]</sup><sup>[3]</sup>.
