The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Jacques-Louis David · Marat assassiné · oil on canvas, about 1.6 by 1.3 metres, the figure at about life size · one upright field: the dead man in his bath in the lower third, a crate at the right inscribed “À MARAT, DAVID” and “L’AN DEUX”, and an empty wall above · painted in the months after 13 July 1793 and presented to the National Convention that November · Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, since 1886 · the single canvas, whole; the studio replicas are not scored
Mode
History painting as a martyr’s image; altarpiece, tomb and the record of a crime in one field, made for a political assembly
Mythos
The Deposition and the Pietà: the dead Christ’s hanging arm, the shroud, the wound in the chest, the altar and the slab, rebuilt from a bath, a cloth and a box
Phase
The moment after the murder of 13 July 1793, the murderer gone; painted in the months after and presented to the Convention in November, in the Year Two
Presentation
Oil on an upright canvas of about 1.6 by 1.3 metres; one figure at about life size, pressed into the lower third against the picture plane; one light from the upper left; more than half the field an empty wall
Register
Mourning held cold, from the composed face to the bloodied knife kept small and low; no terror and no glory
Scale
One body, one tub, one crate, one wall
Governing Proposition
A deputy of the Convention lies dead in his bath, stabbed by a visitor, her letter in one hand and his quill in the other, hanging to the floor. The painter, a deputy himself, gives the body the arm of the dead Christ, makes a packing crate its altar and its tomb, signs the crate to the dead man, and leaves more than half the canvas an empty wall. The wager of the canvas is that a revolution which had put away the church could make a saint of its dead only with the church’s oldest form, and that the form would hold with nothing above the body but a wall.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
On 13 July 1793 Jean-Paul Marat, deputy of the National Convention and the journalist of L’Ami du peuple, was stabbed in his bath by Charlotte Corday, who had come to him with a letter. Jacques-Louis David, born in 1748, was then a deputy of the Convention for Paris and a member of its Committee of General Security, a painter inside the government of the Revolution. That July he staged Marat’s funeral. In the months after the murder he painted this canvas, and in November 1793 he presented it to the Convention, where it hung in the assembly’s hall with its pendant, Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau on his Deathbed. It was made for the room where the state sat, by one of its members, of another.
It is oil on an upright canvas of about 1.6 by 1.3 metres, and the figure is at about life size. Marat’s body is slumped in a wooden tub draped with a sheet; a green cloth laid across the tub serves as a writing board. His head is wrapped in a white cloth and has fallen to one side, the face composed, half in shadow. His right arm hangs over the edge of the tub to the floor, a quill still in its hand. His left hand rests on the board and holds a letter. There is a wound below the right collarbone, and on the floor a bloodied kitchen knife. At the right an upturned wooden crate serves as a table, with an inkwell, a second quill, a paper and a banknote, an assignat, and on its face an inscription.
Above all this, the upper half of the canvas and more is an empty wall, scumbled in brown and green-grey. There is no room beyond, no window, no door, no murderer and no witness. The figure is pressed into the lower third, against the picture plane, and one light falls from the upper left across the shoulder and the sheet and stops. Standing before the canvas, the viewer stands at the tub’s edge, as at a bier.
Movement II
The letter in Marat’s left hand carries the date of 13 July 1793 and Corday’s name, and a line in which she asks for his help: “il suffit que je sois bien malheureuse pour avoir droit à votre bienveillance”
“it is enough that I am very unhappy to have a right to your kindness.” She is not in the picture. Her words are. The plea from misfortune is the instrument of deceit that brought her into the room, and the dead man is still holding it. The painted object can do what no account of the crime does: it puts the text that let the murderer in, and the hand it killed, in the same place.
The right arm drops straight down outside the tub, and the hand keeps the quill. Without it the arm would be only an arm; with it the writer is at work to the last. It is also the oldest arm in painting. The hanging arm of the dead Christ in the Deposition and the Entombment, a formula David knew from Caravaggio’s Entombment and from the Roman reliefs of Meleager carried from the bier, is laid into a bath in Paris. The wound is in the chest. The knife is small and kept low, on the floor at the left, and the blood is little: nothing in the picture is permitted to become terror.
The rest of the structure follows. The sheet is a shroud. The crate is an altar and a tomb slab, with its inscription. The patron saint’s martyrdom is assembled from a bath, a cloth and a box, and the Christian pattern carries the whole composition, not a corner of it. The particular stays particular: a turban of wet cloth, a patched sheet, a writing board, a cheap knife, a date. Take the pattern away and the picture falls into a crime scene. The archetype is borrowed whole, and only one is built; but it is built, and it bears the load.
Movement III
On the face of the crate, in capitals, the painter has written “À MARAT, DAVID”, and below it “L’AN DEUX”: to Marat, David; the Year Two. It is a dedication and a signature at once, and it makes the crate a tombstone with its epitaph. The painter signs the dead man’s tomb as one deputy to another, and dates it by the calendar of the Republic. The crate is three things together: the altar of the martyr, the slab of his grave, and the table of a poor man who wrote on a box.
Poverty is the argument the crate makes. A deputy works in a tub, on a board laid across it, with a crate for a desk and a patched sheet for a cover. On the crate lie a paper and an assignat, money set out to be given away. They make the charity explicit where the bare crate had already said it, and they are the one place where the picture speaks twice. Everything else in the field is required: remove the wall, the crate, the letter, the knife or the quill, and something the picture knows goes with it.
What the picture shows depends on what it cleans away. The record of Marat’s skin disease is set aside for a body modelled with academic exactness and kept firm, without the softness of sleep. The violence of his writing becomes a gift of money. The murderer is reduced to a lying letter. The canvas brings into the open how a political saint is made, and it does so by making one. It does not see around its own making, and the disclosure stands with that concealment beside it.
Movement IV
In the Year Two the Revolution had dismantled the church, and it still needed its dead to be sacred. The canvas shows the only instrument to hand, the old one: the dead Christ, laid under an empty sky. The wall is the second term of the statement. Above the martyr there is no glory, no angel, no opened heaven; there is a wall. It is painted, not left: a thin, mottled scumble with its brushwork visible, the freest painting David had yet made, and at a distance it reads as weight pressing down on the body and as air going up from it at once. The modern state’s martyr is still made this way.
Behind the canvas stand two laws. The academy’s history painting gave antique heroes stoic deaths, with many figures in a frieze, as in David’s own Death of Socrates and Oath of the Horatii; the altarpiece gave the dead Christ. West’s Death of General Wolfe had already put contemporary dress into history painting. What David did was reduce: a man killed a few months before, in a bath, given the gravity and formulas of both laws, with the murderer left out, the story stripped to its aftermath, and half the field left without a subject. Painted wide, the tub would be a bed and the picture a deathbed scene; with Corday in it, as later painters chose, it would be the story of a crime.
One law governs the field. The picture plane is held as a wall, and everything is laid flat against it in a shallow space, like a relief on a tomb; body, tub, crate and void are the horizontals and verticals of one geometry, and one light falls on wall, flesh and wood alike. The grain of the crate, the letters and the paper are exact without becoming a trick. The drapery of the sheet is more studio than tub, and the idealised flesh obeys a different rule from the literal writing and wood: the truth of the icon beside the truth of the record. The making carries the meaning in the wall and the arm.
Movement V
The canvas hung in the Convention’s hall for about two years. After Thermidor the cult it had been made for was over, its painter was imprisoned, and the picture was withdrawn. It came back to David and stayed with him and his family, out of public view for most of the nineteenth century, through his exile in Brussels from 1816 and his death there in 1825. While the original was hidden, the studio replicas made under his direction carried the image. It outlived its purpose, its regime, the standing of its subject and the politics of its maker.
It was shown in Paris in 1846, and Baudelaire wrote on it. The answers followed from there: Baudry’s Charlotte Corday of 1860, answering it; Munch’s paintings of the death of Marat; Picasso’s drawings; and, through the twentieth century, the pictures and photographs of the political dead that take its pose. Its reach is real and came late, and the ninety years in private hands are part of its record. In 1886 it entered the museum in Brussels, where it has hung since. No part of the image is known to be lost or replaced.
In 233 years the questions have not closed. What the wall is: the absence of heaven, the vacancy of the secular, or the place where the picture lets in the contingent and so a first sign of modernism. Whether the canvas is propaganda or truth, and whether the two can be told apart here. Why Corday is absent and her words present. The central meaning is not in dispute. A man lies dead in a tub at the bottom of a tall canvas, his arm hanging to the floor with the quill, a letter in his other hand, a crate beside him signed by the painter, and over him, for more than half the field, a wall.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test finds almost nothing to remove. Take away the empty wall and the picture loses its measure of what is gone: an absence over the dead man that fills more than half the field. Take away the crate and the dedication goes, and with it the work as a tombstone; the crate is also the poverty the picture argues. Without the letter the murder has no instrument of deceit, without the knife no instrument of death, and without the quill the arm is only an arm. What yields first is the banknote and its paper on the crate, which make explicit a charity the bare crate had already stated: the one place the picture speaks twice. The life size is compelled: it stands the viewer at the tub’s edge, as at a bier.
Score: 9.0 / 10
What is disclosed can be stated. A revolution that had dismantled the church needed its dead made sacred, and could make them sacred only with the old instrument: the dead Christ, laid under an empty sky. The empty wall is the disclosure’s second term. Above the martyr there is no glory and no angel, only a wall. That is a meaning, carried by image alone, and it holds beyond 1793: the modern state’s martyr is still made this way. What keeps the axis at the gate and not above it is that the picture is also a concealment. Marat’s diseased skin is cleared, the violence of his writing becomes a gift of money, and the murderer is reduced to a lying letter. The work shows how a political saint is made by making one, and does not see around its own making.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The elevation is grave and still, the sublime of the dead body, and it rises in several places rather than once: the head fallen to one side with the face composed, half in shadow; the arm dropping over the tub’s edge to the floor, the quill still held; the light from the upper left, falling on the shoulder and the sheet and stopping; and the wall above, which reads at a distance as weight pressing down and as air going up at once. The register is single, mourning held cold. Nothing in it reaches terror: the knife and the blood are kept small and low. Height is high, and frequency is that of one moment, one body and one light; it sits below the works that rise across a whole sky or a whole room.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Myth built, and load-bearing. The structure is the Deposition and the Pietà. The hanging arm is the dead Christ’s arm, a formula David knew from Caravaggio’s Entombment and from the Roman reliefs of Meleager carried from the bier; the wound is in the chest; the sheet is a shroud; the crate is an altar and a tomb slab with its inscription. The patron saint’s martyrdom is assembled from a bath, a cloth and a box, and it carries the whole composition, not a corner of it. The particular stays particular: a turban of wet cloth, a patched sheet, a cheap knife, a date. Remove the Christian structure and the picture falls into a crime scene. Held below the top because the archetype is borrowed whole, and one archetype, not several, is built.
Score: 9.0 / 10
The inheritance is two laws. The academy’s history painting: antique heroes, stoic deaths, many figures in a frieze, as in David’s own Death of Socrates and Oath of the Horatii. And the Christian altarpiece. The departure: a contemporary man, killed a few months before, in a bath, painted with the gravity and the formulas of both, the murderer left out, the story stripped to its aftermath and half the canvas left without a subject. West’s Death of General Wolfe had already brought contemporary dress into history painting, so the turn to the present is shared ground; the reduction to one body and the empty field are David’s. The stake was paid in part: the canvas was the Jacobin state’s icon, and after Thermidor its painter was imprisoned and the picture withdrawn.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Change the form and the work stops knowing what it knows. The upright format, with the figure pressed into the lower third against the picture plane, makes the body a relief on a tomb; the empty wall above makes the death a loss and not an event. Painted wide, the tub becomes a bed and the picture a deathbed scene; with Corday in it, as later painters chose, it becomes the story of a crime; on a small canvas the body at life size no longer stands the viewer at the bier. The writing works only in a painted object: the dead man still holds the text that brought his murderer in, and the painter has signed his tomb. Held a step below the top for the paper beside the banknote, where the form tells rather than shows.
Score: 9.3 / 10
Evidence over promise: 233 years, and the questions are not closed. What the empty wall is: the absence of heaven, the vacancy of the secular, or, in one modern account, the place where the picture lets in the contingent, and so a first sign of modernism. Whether the work is propaganda or truth, and whether the two can be told apart here. Why Corday is absent and her words present. What a plea from misfortune does in the hand of the man it helped to kill. How the studio replicas stand to the original. Baudelaire’s account of 1846 and the literature since keep returning to it. Held below the top because much of the debate turns on one device, the wall, and because the central meaning, the martyr made sacred, is agreed.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Published, so force and reach are scored together. The field is French painting of the 1790s and the history painting after it. The intrinsic force: the canvas reorganised what a history painting could be, a contemporary political death given the form of the sacred and reduced to one body and an empty field; it is the model of the modern image of the political martyr. The delay is charged: the canvas was withdrawn after Thermidor and largely unseen until the later nineteenth century, and delayed reach is credited and discounted. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the studio replicas and the state’s use of the image in 1793; Baudelaire’s essay of 1846; Baudry’s Charlotte Corday of 1860, answering it; Munch’s paintings of the death of Marat; Picasso’s drawings; and the pictures and photographs of the political dead that take its pose.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, over 233 years. Form: whole. No part of the image is known to be lost or replaced, and the inscriptions and the empty wall, which carry the meaning, stand. Presence: charged. After about two years in the Convention’s hall the canvas was withdrawn and kept privately, through the painter’s imprisonment, exile and death, seen in Paris in 1846 and little otherwise, until the museum in Brussels took it in 1886; the studio replicas carried the image while it was hidden. Fabric: not examined here, and nothing is charged against it. It has outlived its purpose, its regime, its subject’s standing and its maker’s politics; the cult it was made for ended within a year. The long withdrawal holds it at the foot of its step, beside The Starry Night’s 9.1 at 137 years.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Judged as command of oil on a canvas of about life size, painted within a few months. The flesh is modelled with academic exactness and kept firm, without the softness of sleep. The light comes from one source at the upper left, falls across the shoulder and the sheet, and stops. The wall is the passage of most command: a thin, mottled scumble with its brushwork visible, reading as air and as surface at once, the freest painting David had yet made. The grain of the crate, the letters and the paper are exact without becoming a trick. The costs are small: the drapery of the sheet is more studio than tub. The idealised anatomy, set against the record of Marat’s skin, is a choice of the icon and is not charged. The making is load-bearing in the wall and the arm.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the empty upper wall, all surface and brushwork, and the inscribed crate at the lower right, all hard edge, grain and lettering. They obey one law. The picture plane is held as a wall against which everything is laid flat in a shallow space, like a relief, and one light falls on wall, body and wood alike. Body, tub, crate and void are the horizontals and verticals of one geometry. The range in kind is wide for a single figure: the sacred formula and the documentary letter, the idealised body and the literal knife. One thing resists: the idealised flesh obeys a different rule from the literal writing and wood, the truth of the icon against the truth of the record. The range in figures is narrow, which the axis does not reward.
Score: 9.0 / 10
The orders held: the state, in the deputy, the assembly the picture was made for and the date of the Year Two; labour, in the writer at work to the last, with his board, inkwell and quill; poverty, in the crate for a table, the patched sheet and the money set out to be given away; the sacred, displaced into the political; death and the body, in disease and murder; history, in the date on the letter. They are held together, not listed: each passes through the body in the bath. What holds the axis lowest is the form: one figure, one room, no landscape, no crowd, the family barely present, and the murderer and the city present only as words. The figure describes the form.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.9 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Living Form at 9.3, then The Imperishable and The Made at 9.2, with The Inevitable, The Archetypal Deep and The Inner Law at 9.0. A form in which an upright field, a body pressed against the picture plane and an empty wall make a death into a loss; an image whole after 233 years and a long withdrawal; a wall painted as freely as anything its painter had made, over a body modelled with academic exactness; a field from which almost nothing can be cut; and the Deposition rebuilt from a bath, a cloth and a box.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.8: the state, labour, poverty, the sacred, death and history pass through one body in one room, and there is no landscape and no crowd, and the murderer and the city are present only as words. Below the rest, The Unconcealment at 8.5 and The Sublime at 8.6. The picture shows how a political saint is made by making one, and cleans away the skin, the writing and the murderer to do it; and it rises in a single register, mourning held cold, in one moment and one light.
The Necessity Cap clears at 9.0 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.3, The Made at 9.2, The Inner Law at 9.0, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is met on all five: The Imperishable at 9.2 clears the bar of 8.5 by seven tenths, The Archetypal Deep at 9.0 by five, The Swerve at 8.9 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.9 by four, and The Unconcealment at 8.5 meets it exactly. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.5, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.8. Every summit condition is met; the work is held below the summit by its aggregate alone. The twelve sum to 106.3, an average of 8.86 that displays 8.9, eleven tenths of the sum short of the Tier V display.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the canvas in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels (oil on canvas, about 1.6 by 1.3 metres, painted in 1793), of how it was made and of its later history. No image or written source was consulted, and the surface was not examined. The work scored is the single canvas, as it stands: no part of the image is known to be lost or replaced. The studio replicas made under David’s direction, the pendant Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau on his Deathbed and the funeral David staged for Marat in July 1793 are context, not scored; they bear on Pressure on Tradition and The Imperishable only. The painter’s imprisonment, exile and death are given as dates, and the years in private hands are weighed only as facts of survival. The inscriptions on the crate are quoted as painted. The line of the letter is quoted in substance, in modern spelling, since its spelling and capitals as painted were not checked; the English beneath it is the desk’s own. Facts that could not be verified are not given: among them the exact dimensions, which are recorded variously; the day of the presentation to the Convention; the year the canvas returned to the painter and the manner of its entry into the museum; the places and the hands of the replicas; the fate of the pendant; the wording of the paper on the crate and to whom it sends the money; the condition of the fabric; and the authorship of the reading of the wall as a first sign of modernism.