Exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1787, Jacques-Louis David's 'The Death of Socrates' is a textbook of Neoclassical painting: in the shadowed Athenian prison, Socrates reaches for the cup of hemlock without a tremor while delivering his final discourse on the immortality of the soul, his anguished disciples gesturing around him. The rigidly orthogonal architecture, the chiaroscuro diagonal, and the emotional restraint of the central figure align philosophical virtue with pictorial order. Painted on the eve of the French Revolution, the canvas would be read almost at once as an allegory of Republican sacrifice.

Exhibition Venue

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Manhattan, United States