in the painting the lictors bearing the dead sons of brutus how is it noeclassical?

Answer 1

Firstly a little about the movement and the artist.


Neoclassicism was a French art style and movement that originated as a reaction to the Baroque in the mid-eighteenth century, and continued into the middle of the nineteenth century. It sought to revive the ideals of ancient Greek and Roman art. Neoclassic artists used classical forms to express their ideas about courage, sacrifice, and love of a country. David's uncompromising subordination of color to drawing and his economy of statement were in keeping with the new severity of taste. His themes gave expression to the new cult of the civic virtues of stoical self-sacrifice, devotion to duty, honesty, and austerity. Seldom have paintings so completely typified the sentiment of an age as David's The Oath of the Horatii (Louvre, Paris, 1784), Brutus and his Dead Sons (Louvre, 1789), and The Death of Socrates (Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1787). They were received with acclamation by critics and public alike. Reynolds compared the Socrates with Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling and Raphael's Stanze, and after ten visits to the Salon described it as `in every sense perfect'

During the French Revolution, David played an active role both artistically he reorganized the Académe and produced numerous and spectacular propaganda exercises - and politically, as an avid supporter of Robespierre, who voted for the execution of the king. He also attempted to catalogue the new heroes of the age, abortively in the Oath of the Tennis Court, and successfully in his pieta-like portrayal of the Death of Marat (1793, Brussels, Musée Royaux). He eventually lost out in the confused politics of the 1790s, was imprisoned under the moderate Directory and saved by the intervention of his estranged wife, symbolized in his Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799, Paris, Louvre), a work which strained his Classicism in the search for Greek purity.


Now let's look at the work.


Brutus, first consul, has returned to his home after having condemned his two sons who had joined the Tarquins and conspired against Roman liberty; lictors bring back the bodies so that they may be given burial.

Royal commission, painted in 1789; now in the Louvre

This painting is based on accounts in both Livy and Plutarch that the founder of the Republic of Rome, Lucius Junius Brutus, was compelled to order the execution of his own two sons when they conspired to restore monarchy, and that he then witnessed their execution impassively.

As with the "Oath of the Horatii," this painting contrasts a masculine sphere of stern duty and heavy shadow with a feminine sphere of human emotion, bathed in light. The sunlight coming through the door at the left outlines a statue of the goddess Roma. This work is almost stage set with the female participants in the spotlight. Look at them and you'l see that they are desolate. One covers her face, another smal girl looks on while another can not bear the sight of the bodies. The mother, I pressume reaches out to her dead sons but holds on to her daughters. Notice that the background of the painting is rather stark and boring. This is typical of a Neoclassical work so as to place the emphasis onto the figurative subjects. The father, Brutus is painted in shade, all except his foot. This is crutial as David has clearly shown the tension within this man in his foot. His face is set and severe his body turned away from the stretchers carrying his son's corpes. He is doing what he belives to be what a model citizen would do but the foot gives away his emotion. We have to remember that when David painted this work Jean Jaques Rousseau had already published his Social Contract which was the revolutionaries' manual. A good citizen, a free man, would obey the General Will and not pander to their individual wills whatever their personal pain and sacrifice. This would allow them to be free and good. Thus David has portrayed Brutus as the model citizen sacrificing his individual will for the good of all (the general will). The women in the painting are also part of the propeganda exercise. The may be devastated but they are not intervening. They too are model citizens akin to their revolutionary sisters.

Voltaire had published a tragedy about Brutus in 1730, which had been staged regularly ever since and gave equal weight to the arguments of those who extolled Brutus as a hero and those who believed that Rome needed a monarch to prevent civil strife

Answer 2

Wow - I had to write a paper on this painting by David as part of my Humanities degree with the Open University, so I was going to give you my take on this.................but SamanthaJ has covered it so well, that I'm ashamed to put fingers to keyboard.

I'd give her the 10 points now!