Oil on canvas, 330 × 425 cm, painted by Jacques-Louis David in Rome in
1784 on a commission from Louis XVI. Three Roman brothers, the Horatii,
raise their swords and swear to defend Rome against Alba Longa while
their father holds the blades and the women of the family collapse in the
background. This is the painting that founded Neoclassicism: stoic heroes
and a civic message, which is what Enlightenment Paris was asking for on
the eve of the Revolution. It is in the Louvre.
