A short reflection on the historical and political context of The death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David.
The first time I saw The death of Socrates, I was stunned. The painting was so striking that it felt uncomfortable. It felt so real, it seemed fake. The moment it captured, seemed too perfect.
Of course, the painting is a dramatization. Thus its surplus of epic-ness. Nonetheless, it is an artistic masterpiece, and for more about the symbolism and technical prowess of Luis David, I would recommend the fantastic video essay about it from The Nerdwriter. Back to the painting. The famed greek philosopher, Socrates, was condemned by the Athenian court to be executed by drinking hemlock. He was charged of atheism and of corrupting the youth. Although Socrates was offered the option of exile, as opposed to execution, he refuses to leave Athens, and willingly accepts his sentence. Many people think that, in his refusal to back down, Socrates taught his final lesson. What that lesson is exactly, is still debated. The story of Socrates was recorded by Plato in his Apology and Crito (both great reads). Nevertheless, Socrates became a martyr of free-thought and progressive thinking. Little over two thousand years later, Socrates would come back to terrorize politicians once more.
In France, a couple of years before the revolutionary movement, insurgence sentiments were arising. According to the collection report of The Met museum, the story of Socrates became popular among the liberalists, and many illustrations of his death were created. The "moralizing themes of Socrates were immensely popular in the tumultuous period preceding the French revolution" (The Met).
Philosophy was brought back during the renaissance, and Neo-Hellenism surfaced as the cult of romanticized Greek values. The revolutionaries themselves wished to establish a democracy such as the one in Athens. The Princeton Art Museum webpages suggests that "Socrates was a model to those who wished to reform France’s government along the lines suggested by the contemporary philosophes, who were themselves subject to censorship and persecution". Interestingly, Socrates was a prominent critic of democracy. Nevertheless, he is a patron of the pursuit of a virtuous life.
This is not the first time that philosophers resurface and become icons of social movement. Hypatia, a philosopher and polymath from Alexandria that was executed by a mob of religious fanatics, became symbol for religious tolerance and feminist intellectualism during the 20th and 21st centuries. The legacy of thinkers like Socrates and Hypatia lives on through art like Louis David' s. In this paintings, the spirit of revolutionaries are immortalized; ready to a call for arms by the next generation.
-Atlas.
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