The Death of Marat

The murdered revolutionary Marat slumps dead in his bath, one arm trailing to the floor still holding his pen, the assassin's letter in his other hand, the bloodied knife on the ground - the squalid crime transfigured into a hushed, secular martyrdom. Jacques-Louis David, Marat's friend and ally, strips the scene to a few stark forms against an empty dark ground, lending it the gravity of a religious lamentation. Now in Brussels, the Death of Marat is the great icon of the French Revolution, propaganda raised to the level of tragedy.