The Oath of the Horatii by Jacques Louis David of 1784

This French Neo-classical by Jacques Louis David depicts a scene from Roman history in which the brothers Horatius swear an oath to defend Rome to the death.  The masterpiece has almost universally acclaimed as the perfect example of Neoclassicism in two dimensional art.  The painting was commissioned by King Louis XVI to be an example of loyalty to the state, but it came to represent the call to patriots to oppose tyranny and therefore to point forward in time to the French Revolution.

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