The Death of Marat

The Death of Marat was painted by Jacques-Louis David in 1793 in memory of his friend Marat. Marat was a radical journalist that was in support with the French Revolution. He supported the sans-culottes heavily and was killed by Charlotte Corday on the 13^th of July 1793 because of it. Corday said that she was saving 100,000 lives by killing one. David was a close friend of Marat’s and intentionally left out one physical defect that Marat had. For one, Marat had a terrible skin condition, which is not present in the painting, in which he would get violent itching and the only remedy would be a cold bath. Another detail left out was that the knife that killed him was left in his body in the real murder yet David puts the knife on the side of the tub. All the other details of the painting are correct though; the green rug, the bath tub, the paper in his hand, and the pen in his other hand.

In the Death of Marat, I see Marat in a bath tub next to a bloody rug with a note in his hand. By leaving out Marat’s skin condition, David made Marat a more connectable person to an average person. If you saw a picture of someone dead with a terrible skin condition, then you could not relate to that person unless you to had a terrible skin condition. Jacques-Louis David leaves this detail out so that one gets a more personal message from the painting. David is putting an emotion of sympathy in your mind through this painting which in turn would have helped spread Marat’s ideas which were the reason he was assassinated. It is a friend helping a dying man’s last wish through the action of painting this.