The Oath of Horaces

the Oath of Horaces is a table of Jacques-Louis David, painted in 1784.

The table is of big size: 330 cm in height by 425 cm broad. It is preserved at the Musée of Louvre.
It represents an episode of the legendary history of the Rome Antique, where the Horaces brothers defend in singular combat the young republic vis-a-vis Curiaces champions of the town of Alba. Bound by marriage to their respective sisters, the sacrifice of Horaces and Curiaces exalte patriotic virtues. The only survivor of the combat was the groin of Horaces, which on its return was cursed by his/her Camilla sister for the death of his/her lover.

If the combat appears well in several literary sources (Tite-Live, Plutarque, and other), the oath is to him an invention of David.

It is possible that David who was Franc-maçon was inspired by the procedures of oath using of the swords of those.

This table is regarded as one of the masterpieces of the Néoclassicisme as well in its style as in its austere description of the duty. Although the studies were started by it with Paris on a ordering of the king, David chooses to paint it with Rome, which it could allow only thanks to the financial support of his father-in-law. He was helped partly by his pupil Jean-Germain Drouais. In this table, David breaks the usual rules of composition by decentring the principal subjects. He forgets also the principles of the Académie by treating his colors and reliefs in manner relatively punt.
He was completed in 1785. Exposed initially to Rome in the workshop of the painter, it was brought back to Paris and was exposed to the Living room of 1785. It had an enormous success and made it possible David to eclipse his rivals of which Pierre Peyron.

In the years which followed, the table became symbol of the French revolution, but it is not very probable that David conceived it like a call to the revolution. In 1800 work will inspire the Italian type-setter Bernardo Porta, friend of the painter, for his opera Horaces according to the part of Pierre Corneille.

See too

Horaces and Curiaces

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