Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David was the leading painter of Neoclassicism, the artist of the French Revolution and then of Napoleon. Born in Paris in 1748, he lost his father in a duel at nine and was raised by uncles who were architects. A sword wound left him with a facial tumour and a speech impediment. He failed the Prix de Rome four years running and attempted suicide by starvation before winning it in 1774. Five years in Italy replaced his Rococo training with the antique. The Oath of the Horatii, painted in Rome in 1784 and exhibited in Paris the following year, made him famous: three brothers salute their swords in a rigid frieze of straight lines and hard light, the women collapsed in curves beside them. It was read as a summons to civic virtue over private feeling. He was a Jacobin, sat in the Convention, voted for the king's execution, and was a close ally of Robespierre — he organised the revolutionary festivals and effectively controlled artistic patronage, closing the Royal Academy. The Death of Marat of 1793, painted in weeks, shows the murdered journalist in his bath as a secular pietà and is among the most effective pieces of political art ever made. He was imprisoned twice after Thermidor and escaped the guillotine. He then became Napoleon's painter, producing Bonaparte Crossing the Alps and the enormous Coronation, in which he inserted the emperor's mother, who had not attended. He was exiled after Waterloo as a regicide and settled in Brussels, refusing an invitation to return. He taught Gros, Girodet and Ingres, and died in 1825 after being struck by a carriage.

• Lived: 1748 CE – 1825 CE
• Nationality: French
• Roles: painter