Jacques Louis David (studio of)
1793
130cm x 162cm
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre, Paris
© RMN / Gérard Blot / Christian Jean

This painting, The Death of Marat, was finished in October 1793, just three months after the murder. Several versions and a number of copies exist. One version, said to be the penultimate one, was only recently discovered and sold in Paris in September 2008. The final version is supposed to be the one in the Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts in Brussels, which would make the version in the Louvre the antepenultimate one. Here we notice the painter's great talent for portraiture and the incomparable subtlety of his rendering of light—qualities that are less obvious in his large-scale historical scenes. The most noticeable aspect is the strange light coming from the left and shining on the dark wall like a theater spotlight. It illuminates the body and casts admirable shadows on the skin, highlighting the letter that Marat still holds in his hand as well as the wooden box used as a table for the inkwell and on the side of which is written: "A Marat, David" in the Brussels version and "N'ayant pu me corrompre ils m'ont assassiné" (Unable to corrupt me, they murdered me) in the Paris version.

Jacques Louis David
Jacques-Louis David, born in Paris in 1748, is considered the great representative of the Neoclassical school, which lauded the esthetic canons of Antiquity and perfection of execution. At sixteen he entered the studio of the Rococo painter Joseph-Marie Vien at the Académie Royale. He narrowly failed three times to win the Prix de Rome (after the third attempt, in 1773, he tried to kill himself), before winning it in 1774. He remained in Rome until 1780, returned to exhibit at the Salon du Palais du Louvre in Paris and was elected to the Académie Royale. During the Revolution (he was one of its most fervent agitators before himself being imprisoned after the fall of Robespierre), he developed a particular style based on Roman classical art. His work took on a patriotic and moralistic tone. In 1797, he met Napoleon, then General Bonaparte (who was to appoint him First Painter to the Empire in 1804) and was to remain loyal to him until the debacle of Waterloo, which caused him to be exiled from the kingdom by Louis XVIII, in 1816. He found refuge in Brussels where he painted a series of portraits of prominent Belgian figures. Despite being granted amnesty, he refused to return to France and died in the Belgian capital in 1825.

Paul Baudry
1860
154cm x 203cm
oil on canvas
Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts
© RMN / Gérard Blot

This version of the Assassination of Marat depicts Corday as a frightened, perhaps even dreamy young Virgin. Does she regret her action? Baudry has a map of France pinned to the wall against which she is leaning. What does it signify? Painted in 1860, in the middle of the Second Empire, this picture seeks above all to offend no-one. Charlotte Corday can be seen as the symbol of France as a victim of the Terror (hence the map), or as a poor irresponsible foolish young woman. Yet the painting is above all Baudry's tribute to David: it represents the same scene in an identical setting and with the same furniture (the wooden box used as a table, the board across the bathtub covered with a green cloth) but seen from another angle. Only the knife is different. And on this point Baudry is right: the police report mentions an ebony rather than an ivory handle.

Paul Baudry
Born into a humble family in La Roche-sur-Yon in 1828 (his father was a cobbler), Paul Baudry won a scholarship to study at the Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1844. He won the Prix de Rome in 1850 on his fifth attempt, (which he shared with Bouguereau). There would be nothing much to say about this Neoclassical artist, a lover of Raphael, Michelangelo and Italian Renaissance painting, had he not become one of the staunchest opponents of Manet and later Impressionism. His respectable academic career and the friendship of Napoleon III ought to have been enough. Although Emile Zola may have made him his whipping boy for a time, one must not forget that he was held in high esteem in his day. There was even talk of replacing the originals of Michelangelo and Raphael with his copies, considered excellent, for fear that they might be destroyed by the gaslights catching fire—an argument that hastened the installation of electric lighting where these precious works were hung.

Jean-Joseph Weerts
1880
oil on canvas
Musée La Piscine, Roubaix
© Musée La Piscine, Roubaix

This patriotically-inspired Assassination of Marat, painted in 1880, presents a revised version of historical events, with Charlotte Corday portrayed as a dangerous terrorist execrated by the good people. No tribute to David here. Charlotte Corday is still holding the bloody knife and, with complete disregard for history, a horde of hysterical revolutionaries burst into the room to arrest her. The painting most resembles a modern-day musical or, in those days, an opéra comique. There is nonetheless a sentimentality, a grandiloquence and a kitsch profusion of color that are the trademarks of this respectable craftsman.

Jean-Joseph Weerts
Jean-Joseph Weerts was born in Roubaix in 1846 to Belgian immigrant parents who had moved to northern France to work in the textile industry. His father, an excellent draughtsman, gave him lessons, later sending him to the Academy in Roubaix. The young Jean-Joseph was gifted and won a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he joined the studio of Cabanel. This marked the beginning of a perfect academic career involving patriotic and edifying historical painting, portraits of famous people and religious painting. He became one of the most prominent artists of the Third Republic, a member of the Conseil Supérieur des Beaux-Arts and Commander of the Légion d'Honneur. In 1924, he established the Weerts painting prize and in 1927, the year of his death, he opened his own museum in Roubaix.