Jacques Louis Louis David (Paris, France, Brussels 1748-1825)
Death of Socrates
The Death of Socrates
The Death of Socrates
Created: 1787
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 129.5 x 196.2 cm
Credit: Catherine Lorilard Wolf Collection, Wolf Fund, 1931
Present collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Infrared reflection map
In this landmark work of neoclassical painting from the years before the French Revolution, David tells a classic story of resistance to unjust authority in a sparse, carved composition. The Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 BC) was convicted of the crime of ungodly by the Athenian court; he did not renounce his faith, but died willingly, talking about the immortality of the soul before drinking the viola (1). Through gestures and expressions, David carefully expresses the figures of the characters in the last moments of Socrates' life. He was about to grab a cup of poison offered by a disciple, and this disciple could not bear to see this scene. David consulted with ancient scholars, pursuing his rigorous image, including the details of furniture and clothes; however, he placed Plato at the foot of the bed, not intentionally referring to those present at the time of Socrates' death, but to the author of Phaedo (2), who preserved this ancient story to the present day.
Pictured above: Herm of Socrates, original Greek from the second half of the 4th century BC, marble, 54.8 cm (Roman, Capitolini Museum). This may be the source of David's character.
Picture in frame: Overall
01
Study draft
Creation: 1782
Dimensions: 24.4 × 37.8 cm
Credit: Eliza Whittlesy Collection, Eliza Whittlesy Foundation, 2013
This picture is David's early exploration of the subject in his 1787 painting The Death of Socrates, which was collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1931. It is essentially a depiction or redraw of a looser sketch from a private collection (Rosenberg-Pratt, 2002, vol. I, No. 52, pp. 71-72). It bears the date of 1782. The early treatment of these two compositions was characterized by the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates in his cell, surrounded by disciples. Because of his unorthodox beliefs, he was sentenced to death by the Athenian court, and he was ready to drink a cup of viola. His gesture to the heavens indicates that he has stopped to expound his theory about the immortality of the human soul.
In 1786, when Charles, a wealthy member of the Paris Parliament, commissioned David to create a painting on the subject, David returned to the subject. At that time, he quickly completed a compositional sketch, which is in the museum's collection (introduced in 1786 below), incorporating various new ideas. In later paintings, he added an arched passage to a set of stairs on the left and supplemented the number of disciples on the right.
These works embody David's meticulous approach to preparing major oil paintings. He usually progressed from sketches to many more elaborate compositional studies, introducing small changes and improvements in each iteration. It was only when the composition was fairly clear that he began to study individual figures. The museum's collection also includes a study of pleated cloth by the disciple Crito (pictured below) sitting on the right.
Crito Crito
02
Death of Socrates Creation: 1786 Size: 27.9 × 41.6 cm
This is a study draft of David's Death of Socrates 31.45 in 1787, which was collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1931. In 1782, David first explored the question of the Greek philosopher's death in prison, but in 1786, Charles Louis Trudan de Montini, a wealthy member of the Paris parliament, commissioned him to paint a painting on the subject that brought him back to it. These four years were a crucial period in the formation of David's art and the development of neoclassicism, marked by seminal paintings such as Andromach Moy hector (1783) and the Horatti Oath (1785), whose treatment of the subject was clearly full of new ideas and insights, which he could not wait to write down.
Taking his 1782 work The Death of Socrates 1782 as a starting point, David quickly carefully designed and revised a version of the work. Placing the disciple who handed Socrates a cup of viola in a more tense position and being moved to the left, leaving space in the middle of the scene, isolating and emphasizing the passage of poison from one hand to the other. The number of disciples on the right increased from four to six, and Crito sat on a stone in front of him, no longer holding a book, but clutching Socrates' thigh, as if begging him to change his mind. The rough architectural sign on the left contains evidence of the artist's evolving ideas, the left rough architectural sign contains evidence of the artist's evolving ideas, and at the end of the corridor to the back is a set of stairs through which Socrates' family leaves. In the 1782 version, the figures are set against a flat stone, indicating that the harshness of his cell has not been alleviated.
As a study map, it reveals the artist's main concerns. The perspective line in the lower left corner recedes toward a vanishing point above the head of Plato, the melancholy man sitting at the foot of the bed. In this subtle way, David draws attention to Plato's special character, who does not appear in Socrates' cell, but describes the scene in his Phaedo. As Socrates's gesture to heaven suggests, his final moments were describing his views on the immortality of the soul to his disciples. Just behind Socrates' right leg, David sketched the shape of the ancient seven-stringed violin. In Plato's text, this instrument symbolizes a proposed analogy to the relationship between the human soul (music) and the body (musical instrument). Many visible representations, or variations, in the hands of the disciples holding the cup, above the fingers of Socrates, and on socrates' legs, all indicate that the artist has a precise concern for the connection between form and gesture, and will also give the painting a resonant and memorable focus.
Text/PerrinStein
03
Imitations
This painting is a masterpiece by a french painter imitating David's Death of Socrates, created in the 19th century, size: 10× 16.1 cm, from: a gift from Eric Carlson, in honor of Paul Germaugh, 2013.
concentrate:
(1) Poison viola: [Pinyin dújǐn] is a poisonous vanilla that is very common in Europe. Legend has it that the famous Greek philosopher Socrates died of drinking the sap of this plant when he committed suicide.
(2) Phildo: The author, Plato, is summarized below:
When Socrates died, his student Ferdo was at his side, very loyal. After Socrates' death, Fido told his friends his last moments. He told them that Socrates had not drunk the poison near dusk. He spent the whole day in discussion, as he had done in prison and outside of prison, and the conversation turned to the question of soul immortality.
Various so-called evidences are mentioned, one of the main ones being that "our birth is nothing more than a kind of sleep and forgetting", and learning is recalling knowledge gained in another life. At the end, however, this argument is abandoned along with all other arguments. Socrates then came up with a new idea: the soul is immortal because it can comprehend, it can share truth, goodness, and beauty, and these things are eternal. Man can know God because he has something in God that is similar to eternity and immortality. All present accepted this view, while Socrates went on to proclaim that God's righteousness could only be revealed in the afterlife, and vividly described a vivid picture of heaven and hell. But he told his audience not to regard his description as the truth, but as something "necessarily similar to the truth." ——Zhang Jianhui