''Oath of the Horatii'' (french: Le Serment des Horaces), is a large painting by the French artist
Jacques-Louis David painted in 1784 and now on display in the
Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
in Paris.
The painting immediately became a huge success with critics and the public, and remains one of the best known paintings in the
Neoclassical style
Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing sty ...
.
It depicts a scene from a Roman legend about a seventh-century BC dispute between two warring cities,
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
and
Alba Longa, and stresses the importance of patriotism and masculine self-sacrifice for one's country. Instead of the two cities sending their armies to war, they agree to choose three men from each city; the victor in that fight will be the victorious city. From Rome, three brothers from a Roman family, the
Horatii, agree to end the war by fighting three brothers from a family of
Alba Longa, the Curiatii. The three brothers, all of whom appear willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
,
are shown
saluting their father who holds their swords out for them.
Of the three Horatii brothers, only one will survive the confrontation. However, it is the surviving brother who is able to kill the other three fighters from Alba Longa: he allows the three fighters to chase him, causing them to separate from each other, and then, in turn, kills each Curiatii brother. Aside from the three brothers depicted, David also represents, in the bottom right corner, a woman crying while sitting down. She is Camilla, a sister of the Horatii brothers, who is also betrothed to one of the Curiatii fighters, and thus she weeps in the realisation that, whatever happens, she will lose someone she loves. Seeing her weep the surviving brother, Publius, kills Camilla for weeping over the enemy.
The principal sources for the story behind David's ''Oath'' are the first book of
Livy
Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in ...
(sections 24–26) which was elaborated by
Dionysius in book 3 of his ''Roman Antiquities''.
However, the moment depicted in David's painting is his own invention.
The painting led to the popularization of the
Roman salute
The Roman salute, alternatively called the Fascist salute, is a gesture in which the right arm is fully extended, facing forward, with palm down and fingers touching. In some versions, the arm is raised upward at an angle; in others, it is held ...
.
It grew to be considered a paragon of
neoclassical art. The painting increased David's fame, allowing him to take on his own students.
[Jacques-Louis David: The Oath of the Horatii](_blank)
(from the Boston College website. Retrieved 2008-01-10.)
Commissioning the work
![David Brutus](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/David_Brutus.jpg)
In 1774, David won the
Prix de Rome
The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them t ...
with his work ''
Érasistrate découvrant la cause de la Maladie d’Antiochius''. This allowed him to stay five years (1775–1780) in Rome as a student from the French government. Upon his return to Paris, he exhibited his work, which
Diderot greatly admired; the success was so resounding that King Louis XVI of France allowed him to stay in the Louvre, a privilege greatly desired by artists. There he met Pecoul, the contractor for the actual buildings, and Pecoul's daughter, whom he married. The king's assistant, Charles-Claude Flahaut de la Billaderie, commissioned ''Oath of the Horatii'' with the intention that it be an allegory about loyalty to the state and therefore to the king. Nevertheless, David departed from the agreed-upon scene, painting this scene instead. The painting was not completed in Paris, but rather in Rome, where David was visited by his pupil Jean-Germaine Drouais who had himself recently won the Prix de Rome. Ultimately, David's picture manifests a progressive outlook, deeply influenced by Enlightenment ideas, that eventually contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy. As the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
approached, paintings increasingly referred to the loyalty to the state rather than the family or the church. Painted five years before the Revolution, the ''Oath of the Horatii'' reflects the political tensions of the period.
In 1789, David painted ''
The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons'', a picture that was also a royal commission. Shortly afterward, the king went up to the scaffold also accused of treason, as the sons of Brutus, and with the vote of the artist in the National Assembly, which supported the execution of Louis XVI.
Symbolic theme
![Jacques-Louis David - Oath of the Horatii - Google Art Project](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Jacques-Louis_David_-_Oath_of_the_Horatii_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
The painting depicts the Roman
Horatius family, who, according to
Titus Livius
Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in ...
' ''
Ab Urbe Condita'' (''From the Founding of the City'') had been chosen for a ritual duel against three members of the Curiatii, a family from
Alba Longa, in order to settle disputes between the Romans and the latter city.
As
revolution in France loomed, paintings urging loyalty to the state rather than to clan or clergy abounded. Although it was painted nearly four 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. With their resolute gaze and taut, outstretched limbs, they are citadels of patriotism. They are symbols of the highest virtues of Rome. Their clarity of purpose, mirrored by David's simple yet powerful use of tonal contrasts, lends the painting, and its message about the nobility of patriotic sacrifice, an electric intensity. This is all in contrast to the tender-hearted women who lie weeping and mourning, awaiting the results of the fighting.
The mother and sisters are shown clothed in silken garments seemingly melting into tender expressions of sorrow. Their despair is partly due to 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 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, ''
The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons'' depicted a similar scene -
Lucius Junius Brutus brooding as the bodies of his sons, whose executions for treason he had ordered, are returned home. This was a subject the tragedy ''Brutus'' by
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—es ...
had made familiar to the French.
![Study for the Oath of the Horatii- Camilla](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Study_for_the_Oath_of_the_Horatii-_Camilla.jpg)
The painting shows the three brothers on the left, the Horatii father in the center, and the three women along with two children on the right. The Horatii brothers are depicted swearing upon (saluting) their swords as they take their oath. The men show no sense of emotion. Even the father, who holds up three swords, shows no emotion. On the right, three women are weeping—one in the back and two up closer. The woman dressed in the white is a Horatius weeping for both her Curiatii fiancé and her brother; the one dressed in brown is a Curiatius who weeps for her Horatii husband and her brother. The background woman in black holds two children—one of whom is the child of a Horatius male and his Curiatii wife. The younger daughter hides her face in her nanny's dress as the son refuses to have his eyes shielded.
According to Thomas Le Claire:
Compositional technique
![Schhoraces5](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Schhoraces5.jpg)
This painting shows the
neoclassical art style,
and employs various techniques that were typical of it:
*The background is de-emphasized, while the figures in the foreground are emphasized.
*Overlapping ranks of profile figures are a common motif in classical art, and that of other ancient Near Eastern cultures.
*The central point of the hand clasping the swords is placed in front of the
vanishing point
A vanishing point is a point on the image plane of a perspective drawing where the two-dimensional perspective projections of mutually parallel lines in three-dimensional space appear to converge. When the set of parallel lines is perpendicul ...
of the
perspective scheme, which is emphasized by the straight lines of the edges of the wall blocks and floor slabs of the architectural setting leading to it (see schematic).
*The use of dull colors is to show the importance of the story behind the painting over the painting itself.
*The picture is 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
Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...
art.
*The brushstrokes are invisible, and the painter's technique is not displayed as a distraction from the subject
*The men are all depicted with straight lines mirroring the columns in the background signifying their rigidity and strength while the women are all curved like the arches which are held up by the columns.
*The use of straight lines to depict strength is also demonstrated in the swords, two of which are curved while one is straight, perhaps foreshadowing that only one brother would survive the encounter.
*The frozen quality of the painting is also intended to emphasize rationality, unlike the Rococo style.
*That it depicts a morally uplifting story, promoting civic duty over the personal, reflects the values of the
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
and neoclassical idealism.
Comparisons
File:Lille PdBA david horaces.JPG, Study by David, drawing
File:Assyrian archers.jpg, Assyria
Assyria ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the ...
n archers, from a relief
Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term '' relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...
of about 728 BC, British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
File:Parthenon frieze north XLIII.JPG, Overlapping riders in profile, from the Parthenon Frieze
The Parthenon frieze is the high-relief Pentelic marble sculpture created to adorn the upper part of the Parthenon’s naos. It was sculpted between c. 443 and 437 BC, most likely under the direction of Pheidias. Of the 160 meters (524 ft) ...
File:Gavin Hamilton - the oath of brutus.jpg, Gavin Hamilton, ''The oath of Brutus'', 1763–64
File:Johann Heinrich Füssli 018.jpg, Johann Heinrich Füssli
Henry Fuseli ( ; German: Johann Heinrich Füssli ; 7 February 1741 – 17 April 1825) was a Swiss painter, drawing, draughtsman and writer on art who spent much of his life in United Kingdom, Britain. Many of his works, such as ''The Nightmare ...
, the '' Rütlischwur'', an oath from medieval Swiss history, 1780
File:Macbeth and Banquo with the witches JHF.jpg, Johann Heinrich Füssli
Henry Fuseli ( ; German: Johann Heinrich Füssli ; 7 February 1741 – 17 April 1825) was a Swiss painter, drawing, draughtsman and writer on art who spent much of his life in United Kingdom, Britain. Many of his works, such as ''The Nightmare ...
, ''Macbeth and Banquo with the witches'', 1793–64
File:El Tres de Mayo, by Francisco de Goya, from Prado thin black margin.jpg, '' El Tres de Mayo'', by Francisco de Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and e ...
, making a very different use of a file of men in profile, 1814.
File:Carnavalet - Pendule au Serment des Horaces 01.jpg, Mantel clock version, Carnavalet Museum, Paris
Reception
David first exhibited the painting in Rome, where even the Pope requested a viewing.
The painting was exhibited in France at the Salon of 1785, but it was delivered late.
David's enemies at the Academy took advantage of the delay to exhibit the painting in a poor locale in the gallery. The public's dissatisfaction with the painting's poor viewing conditions obliged the gallery to move it to a more prominent location. David kept ''The Oath of the Horatii'' on exhibit for longer than expected to permit reporters to write about all of the paintings exhibited, not just his.
References
External links
{{ACArt
1784 paintings
Neoclassical paintings
Horatii
Paintings by Jacques-Louis David
Paintings in the Louvre by French artists
Paintings set in ancient Rome