Jacques-Louis David

Three brothers swear on their father's swords to die for Rome while their women collapse in a curve of grief. Commissioned by Louis XVI and unveiled five years before the Revolution, the painting defined Neoclassical moral rigor for a generation.

Socrates reaches for the hemlock while lecturing his grieving disciples on immortality, one finger stabbing heavenward. David painted it on the eve of the Revolution; Reynolds called it the greatest modern history painting.

Marat in his bathtub, stabbed by Charlotte Corday, pen still in hand. David painted him as a secular martyr — a revolutionary Pietà for a Republic that had killed its king.

David invented the cinematic pose — rearing horse, windswept cape, outstretched finger — that the actual crossing lacked. Napoleon, who had used a mule, told David to paint him 'calm on a fiery horse' and handed him five replicas to produce.

Nearly ten meters wide. Napoleon, having just placed the crown on his own head, is about to crown Joséphine. David inserted Napoleon's mother in the grandstand though she refused to attend.