Death of Marat

Jacques-Louis David, Death of Marat (1793). Collection of Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.

«There is something at once both tender and poignant about this work; in the icy air of that room, on those chilly walls, about that cold and funereal bath, hovers a soul. May we have your leave, you politicians of all parties, and you too, wild liberals of 1845, to give way to emotion before David’s masterpiece? This painting was a gift to a weeping country, and there is nothing dangerous about our tears».

Charles Baudelaire on Jacques Louis David’s ‘The Death of Marat’, 1793