The Death of Socrates

In 1787, French artist Jacques-Louis David painted the last breath of Socrates, the Greek philosopher condemned to death by Athens for questioning the gods and, so the charge went, leading the city's young people astray. Offered a cup of poison hemlock, Socrates refused to run or plead for his life. David shows him seated upright, one hand reaching almost casually for the deadly cup while the other points toward the heavens, still teaching about the soul living on even as his own life ends. The man passing him the poison turns away, unable to watch, and the grief of the friends surrounding him only sharpens Socrates' steady calm.

This is Neoclassicism at its clearest, a style built on the balance, restraint, and heroic ideals borrowed from ancient Greece and Rome. Crisp outlines, statue-like bodies, and a beam of light falling on Socrates pull your eye straight to the center of the drama. David finished the work just two years before the French Revolution, and its theme of holding firm against unjust rulers spoke loudly to viewers on the edge of upheaval. He also played a bit loose with the facts, placing Plato as a white-haired old man at the foot of the bed when he would actually have been a young man at the time. A small reminder that painters sometimes rewrite history when it makes for a better picture.