Jacques Louis David’s Brutus. 1789
Look at the still life at the centre of this piece; a proto photographic, almost Carravagesue, creation. It is a small but crucial detail. It speaks of the paintings true meaning. The blade pierces the fabrics, a reference to the piercing of the domestic space by the loss of the young men. The still life is a poetic metaphor for the whole painting. This is a picture about domestic grief.
History lies. The perpetual desire to find meaning in a picture through a socio-political recontextualisation is the legacy of T. J. Clarke’s brilliant writing. Such a methodology denies an analysis which places the works visual structure at its basis. David’s Brutus is a case in point, a closer analysis of the picture shows that we should not so readily accept this image as one overflowing with proto revolutionary sentiment.
The accepted analysis of this work is that it anticipates the revolution; a celebration of a republican state, with Brutus as its hero. There is no doubting Brutus is the key celebrity figure of republican ideals. Having swore an oath on the body of Lucretia (who had committed suicide after being raped by Tarquin, the monarch) he led the charge for the overthrow of the monarchy. As head of the republic he had to display myopic stoicism in following his ideals. He sentenced his own sons to death for their plot to restore the Monarchy.
The grounds for this image as a celebration of pro republican feeling are flawed on two levels. Firstly it depicts the domestic grief in response to the sons death. This is the tragic effect of Brutus’ actions, not the best moment to select to aggrandise republican ideals. The Oath of Brutus or the sentencing of the sons would have shed a warmer light on the ideology.
Secondly there is no historical evidence to suggest that in 1789 David, or indeed France, had vehemently Republican ideals. The French revolution, the collapse of the Monarchy and the rise of the republic seems to have happened in an incredibly short period of time. To suggest such ideals would be intrinsic to David’s morals is to ignore the fact that this was a man capable of adjusting his moral compass for personal and artistic gain at any moment. This painting may be a celebration of antiquity, but it is not a call to arms. The ‘Death of Marat’ 1795 is a far more incontestable example of pro republican propaganda.
If such an analysis is bankrupt, or at the least flawed, then we need to return to the image itself. When we do we find an image of surprising compassion and emotional complexity. This is not the cold purely intellectual construction that a label such as Neo-Classical so unhelpfully suggests.
Consciously or not it is the structure of David’s images which initially controls our segmented consumption of the whole. In previous works, such as ‘Oath of the Horatti’, the structure is more explicitly controlled by architecture. Whilst architecture is present, and important in this composition, it is a single object that pivots the image. The empty chair in the central of the painting is the pivot around which the drama unfolds. It is empty. The absence of the presumed figural presence attests to the void left by the death of Brutus’ sons. Its spatial centrality speaks of its narrative importance. The dead bodies are carried through in the background; by it is this foreground absence which strikes a chord. Thus the image becomes about the domestic grief and reaction to an absent other.
The chair echoes the division of the image into engendered realms. On the right we have the female half and on the left the male half. They are positioned as emotional binary oppositions. A dialogue between the halves is opened up, each feeding our reading of the other
The female half is about the presence of grief. The group of figures echo the Niobe group. The borrowing is not just about a knowing nod to antiquity but an awareness of the power of emotions contained in the particular figural mechanics. The mother reaches out in a hopeless grasp, trying to deny her sons passing. At the same time her other arm holds up her daughter who swoons from the gravity of emotion. The double action speaks of her role of a mother, caring for a daughter, which thus heightens the sense of lost contained in her outstretched arm. The other daughter holds her hands up to block the vision; her features contain a moving melancholy. To their right a figure is draped with a cloth. By hiding her features our imagination creates a reaction beyond the realm of vision.
Brutus displays no such outward emotion. His stoic presence recalls Michelangelo’s Issiah. The quotation is not just derivative or an elitist reference but an awareness of Michelangelo’s ability to display emotional feeling through the form of a figure. David creates an emotional contradiction between the top and bottom of Brutus, between the face and the body.
The face looks out blankly, stoically excepting the death. Its eyes look to us but the lack of communication speaks of an emotional blankness. The body, conversely, twists dynamically, the toes curl like those in Titian’s ‘Crowning of thorns.’ The tension in the figure speaks of a burning anguish which is being repressed rather than an emotional bankruptcy. He sits in shadow, his back to the empty chair and his family. Everything about his pose is fraught with unease.
We move between the two realms aware that the female grief attests to the torment which Brutus tries to hide. The cost of his personal loss for the greater good of the state is pictured not as heroic, but tragic.
