Abstract

How and to what extent did the collapse of the Terreur affect the self-stylizations of Jacques-Louis David? Which strategies of artistic self-representation and self-legitimization did he use after 9 Thermidor 1794 and the preceding “patricide” of King Louis XVI, and did they undergo a similarly fundamental change as France’s political culture of the time? To discuss these questions, the article draws upon written “ego-documents” as well as paintings by David, including his famous self-portrait of 1794, which he painted while in prison. The article investigates David’s self-stylizations as autonomous, fatherless artist, and how he compensated for the loss of his father by constructing a new genealogy: claiming for himself the role of the père de l’école davidienne, with his disciples figuring as his “sons” in aestheticis – a model already underlying his Socrates of 1787. David’s aesthetic concept of the pre-Revolution period is outlined by referring to the Horatii (1784) and Brutus (1789). As can be shown, the Republican ideal manifest in both works will much later reoccur in the Léonidas (1799 – 1814), this time to show the failure of a moderate republicanism under the conditions of Napoleonic imperialism.

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