1 00:00:15,607 --> 00:00:20,806 A funeral cortége clatters its way through the cobbled streets of Brussels. 2 00:00:22,447 --> 00:00:24,165 Inside the carriage is the body 3 00:00:24,247 --> 00:00:27,762 of the most powerful French painter there had ever been. 4 00:00:28,807 --> 00:00:30,525 Jacques-Louis David. 5 00:00:37,967 --> 00:00:41,880 Following the carriage is a solemn procession of art students, 6 00:00:41,967 --> 00:00:45,880 holding up placards with the names of his paintings. 7 00:00:49,087 --> 00:00:54,445 All but one, which happened to be the greatest of them all. 8 00:00:55,287 --> 00:00:59,758 It was a picture which hadn't seen the light of day for 30 years. 9 00:00:59,847 --> 00:01:04,045 No one, least of all the man who painted it, dared show it. 10 00:01:09,167 --> 00:01:13,604 No wonder. It was the most spellbinding thing he had ever made. 11 00:01:15,327 --> 00:01:18,524 A painting before which people had once swooned. 12 00:01:19,647 --> 00:01:23,117 A painting both beautiful and repulsive. 13 00:01:27,087 --> 00:01:30,523 But the picture was also a guilty secret, 14 00:01:30,607 --> 00:01:35,283 the real reason why David's body was refused burial in France. 15 00:01:37,207 --> 00:01:39,880 So, what was it about this painting 16 00:01:39,967 --> 00:01:46,486 which made it both his unforgettable masterpiece and his unforgivable crime? 17 00:02:22,887 --> 00:02:26,084 On the 19th September, 1783, 18 00:02:26,847 --> 00:02:31,125 an enormous taffeta spheroid wobbled its way unsteadily 19 00:02:31,207 --> 00:02:33,482 above the palace of Versailles. 20 00:02:35,247 --> 00:02:39,240 In the basket were a sheep, a duck and a rooster. 21 00:02:41,767 --> 00:02:45,396 When a violent gust of wind made a tear near the top of the balloon, 22 00:02:45,487 --> 00:02:48,524 there were fears for the barnyard aeronauts. 23 00:02:50,687 --> 00:02:55,522 In the end, though, the balloon survived and it was judged the animals had not suffered. 24 00:03:00,127 --> 00:03:03,437 This was, though, a major breach of protocol. 25 00:03:03,887 --> 00:03:07,323 Versailles had been built to control spectacle. 26 00:03:07,807 --> 00:03:11,595 That way, the mystery of absolutism was preserved. 27 00:03:16,047 --> 00:03:20,882 On the ground, it was still, to some extent, an aristocratic vision. 28 00:03:22,367 --> 00:03:25,564 In the air, it'd become democratic. 29 00:03:31,647 --> 00:03:34,320 In Paris, a more down-to-earth thrill. 30 00:03:38,207 --> 00:03:44,123 Beaumarchais'play, The Marriage of Figaro, is about to open after several government bans. 31 00:03:46,167 --> 00:03:51,685 The king had called it detestable. That guaranteed a crowd. 32 00:03:54,727 --> 00:03:55,921 No, monsieur. 33 00:03:56,967 --> 00:04:00,801 Because you are a great lord, you think you're a great genius? 34 00:04:01,287 --> 00:04:03,847 Nobility, rank, 35 00:04:03,927 --> 00:04:08,239 position, fortune, how proud they make a man feel. 36 00:04:08,727 --> 00:04:11,719 What have you done to deserve such advantages? 37 00:04:12,927 --> 00:04:17,523 Put yourself to the trouble of being born, nothing more. For the rest... 38 00:04:19,447 --> 00:04:21,563 ...you're a very ordinary man. 39 00:04:29,007 --> 00:04:33,523 There were no signs that the bravos died on the lips of the nobility, 40 00:04:33,607 --> 00:04:38,078 even as they began to realise the significance of the attack. 41 00:04:40,047 --> 00:04:42,481 Talk about signing your own death warrant. 42 00:04:42,567 --> 00:04:45,559 But then, how were they to know that, in under 10 years, 43 00:04:45,647 --> 00:04:50,118 they'd be on the receiving end of something far more wounding than words. 44 00:04:51,167 --> 00:04:53,681 Look, citizens, 45 00:04:54,807 --> 00:04:57,958 at the glorious destiny that awaits us. 46 00:04:59,487 --> 00:05:02,957 You have a whole nation to mobilise. 47 00:05:03,847 --> 00:05:04,916 No more... 48 00:05:05,007 --> 00:05:08,283 Still, the French Revolution could never have happened 49 00:05:08,367 --> 00:05:10,642 without this sense of theatre. 50 00:05:11,767 --> 00:05:17,683 Its great orators, like Danton, were performers, shamelessly playing to the gallery, 51 00:05:17,767 --> 00:05:20,645 milking the cheers and the hisses. 52 00:05:20,727 --> 00:05:23,082 Reason fights on your side, 53 00:05:23,167 --> 00:05:27,763 and you have not even begun to astonish the world. 54 00:05:29,207 --> 00:05:32,438 And if they were really going to create a new France, 55 00:05:32,527 --> 00:05:36,202 they needed someone to create images to go with the words. 56 00:05:40,807 --> 00:05:44,163 That someone was Jacques-Louis David. 57 00:05:44,887 --> 00:05:50,041 It was David who would give people the vision of what a true citizen was. 58 00:05:51,087 --> 00:05:56,923 His art, then, wasn't meant as gallery fodder. It was an entire way of life. 59 00:06:02,567 --> 00:06:03,841 Or death. 60 00:06:04,967 --> 00:06:09,597 I'm not sure how I feel about this painting, except deeply conflicted. 61 00:06:10,487 --> 00:06:12,921 Yes, it's tragically beautiful. 62 00:06:13,007 --> 00:06:18,718 But to say that is to separate it from the appalling moment of its creation. 63 00:06:20,527 --> 00:06:25,920 This is Jean-Paul Marat, the most paranoid of the Revolution's fanatics. 64 00:06:26,967 --> 00:06:29,481 He's been assassinated in his bath. 65 00:06:32,127 --> 00:06:37,440 Marat was someone for whom there could never be enough terror, never enough killing. 66 00:06:38,887 --> 00:06:42,846 But for David, Marat isn't a monster. He's a saint. 67 00:06:44,047 --> 00:06:48,325 This painting transforms Marat into a paragon of virtue. 68 00:06:49,367 --> 00:06:51,597 Breathtaking? For sure. 69 00:06:51,687 --> 00:06:54,520 But maybe also just a little mad. 70 00:07:00,327 --> 00:07:05,276 Which isn't to say that Jacques-Louis David was some sort of malevolent crackpot. 71 00:07:05,687 --> 00:07:09,316 All his life, he was really only looking for virtue. 72 00:07:11,127 --> 00:07:16,520 There was something painfully earnest about him, resolute, self-contained. 73 00:07:17,647 --> 00:07:19,524 One, two, three. 74 00:07:21,527 --> 00:07:24,325 Not surprising, really. When he was seven, 75 00:07:24,407 --> 00:07:28,639 his father, an iron merchant, had been killed in a pistol duel. 76 00:07:29,647 --> 00:07:32,798 Something iron must have entered the boy's soul. 77 00:07:35,167 --> 00:07:38,239 He was looked after by friendly uncles 78 00:07:38,327 --> 00:07:44,846 who wanted him to be a lawyer or an architect, but David would hear of nothing but painting. 79 00:07:45,607 --> 00:07:49,156 So the uncles sent him on to his mother's cousin, 80 00:07:49,247 --> 00:07:53,206 who just happened to be the most successful painter in France. 81 00:07:57,087 --> 00:08:02,400 Francois Boucher knew exactly what art was supposed to deliver for the nobility. 82 00:08:03,567 --> 00:08:07,446 The pinkest, flossiest eye candy imaginable, 83 00:08:07,527 --> 00:08:11,281 rosy bums romping on frothy pillows. 84 00:08:21,167 --> 00:08:24,796 But perhaps Boucher saw in the sober, young David 85 00:08:24,887 --> 00:08:29,119 someone for whom melting beauty was not going to be the point of art. 86 00:08:29,887 --> 00:08:32,355 So he sent him on to another master. 87 00:08:32,447 --> 00:08:36,201 But Boucher said to David, ''Come and see me from time to time, 88 00:08:36,287 --> 00:08:38,676 and I will teach you my warmth.'' 89 00:08:43,207 --> 00:08:48,076 But David would never be at home in the pleasure industry. He was a loner. 90 00:08:48,167 --> 00:08:53,082 Once he got involved in a swordfight, and took a vicious slash on his cheek. 91 00:08:55,127 --> 00:09:01,475 The wound grew into a benign tumour. That was the first thing anyone noticed about him. 92 00:09:02,687 --> 00:09:06,646 His enemies would call him, ''David with the swollen cheek. '' 93 00:09:15,407 --> 00:09:21,482 Accidents like this happened every day. Walk down any Paris street or into any salon, 94 00:09:21,567 --> 00:09:25,401 and you would have seen a rich gallery of the deformed and the disfigured. 95 00:09:25,487 --> 00:09:30,003 Terrible smallpox scars, club feet, harelips, the lot. 96 00:09:30,087 --> 00:09:35,207 But some accidents matter to people and some don't. This one did. 97 00:09:41,647 --> 00:09:45,526 David's disfigurement meant he couldn't talk properly. 98 00:09:47,007 --> 00:09:52,001 Few people could understand what he was saying, so he ended up not saying very much. 99 00:09:53,287 --> 00:09:57,405 When he did talk, he was painfully conscious of being a stammerer. 100 00:10:07,727 --> 00:10:12,755 If there was ever a moment in history when wit and banter really mattered, 101 00:10:12,847 --> 00:10:15,441 it was surely in 18th-century France. 102 00:10:15,807 --> 00:10:22,246 But David of the swollen cheek couldn't talk, he couldn't chat, he just mumbled. 103 00:10:26,527 --> 00:10:28,563 Maybe there was one consolation, 104 00:10:28,647 --> 00:10:33,926 for there was someone else who was famous for his handicaps in the wit department, 105 00:10:34,007 --> 00:10:36,237 and he happened to be the king. 106 00:10:41,047 --> 00:10:45,279 Louis XVI was born to worry about happiness. 107 00:10:46,527 --> 00:10:51,647 His grandfather, Louis XV, had designed Versailles around its pursuit. 108 00:10:51,727 --> 00:10:56,562 But for his young successor, happiness would always be hard work. 109 00:11:03,607 --> 00:11:08,920 When Louis came to the throne in 1775, he wanted the best for everyone, 110 00:11:09,687 --> 00:11:12,360 but he just didn't know how to get it. 111 00:11:15,607 --> 00:11:18,075 The saddest thing about Louis XVI 112 00:11:18,167 --> 00:11:22,957 was that the king who went down in history as the reactionary symbol of the old regime 113 00:11:23,047 --> 00:11:28,804 actually thought of himself as thoroughly modern, deeply into science and technology. 114 00:11:28,887 --> 00:11:31,321 Balloons? Couldn't get enough of them. 115 00:11:34,887 --> 00:11:41,076 His reign, which ended in catastrophe, began in a sunburst of giddy optimism, 116 00:11:42,247 --> 00:11:44,442 and a change in taste, too. 117 00:11:44,887 --> 00:11:49,961 Out went gold ormolu, in came modesty, the cult of nature. 118 00:11:56,167 --> 00:12:02,242 Even Louis XVI's young Austrian queen, Marie Antoinette, was a devotee. 119 00:12:02,847 --> 00:12:09,036 She built a toy farm here at Versailles, went off milking cows in the royal dairy. 120 00:12:10,167 --> 00:12:13,364 So, no more couches and courtesans. 121 00:12:13,447 --> 00:12:16,757 Instead, tenderness, simplicity. 122 00:12:22,967 --> 00:12:27,677 Tears were especially prized as evidence of feeling. 123 00:12:28,687 --> 00:12:31,076 Paintings like this went down well. 124 00:12:31,167 --> 00:12:35,479 Girl Weeping Over Dead Canary by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. 125 00:12:36,287 --> 00:12:38,482 People wept when they saw it. 126 00:12:46,727 --> 00:12:49,082 Feelings mattered to David, too, 127 00:12:49,167 --> 00:12:53,445 but not the shallow kind embraced by the fashionable elite. 128 00:12:59,727 --> 00:13:03,686 No, David was in search of something steelier. 129 00:13:09,447 --> 00:13:12,883 It was amidst the stones of Rome that he found it. 130 00:13:13,607 --> 00:13:17,600 Everything changed for David here. Not just what he thought about art, 131 00:13:17,687 --> 00:13:20,679 but what he thought about the future of his country. 132 00:13:23,887 --> 00:13:26,879 So what were the stones telling him? 133 00:13:27,367 --> 00:13:30,677 ''This is what happens to decadent empires, '' they said. 134 00:13:31,487 --> 00:13:35,002 Once there had been a free Rome, the Republic, 135 00:13:35,087 --> 00:13:39,922 austere,just, virile, packed with flinty heroes. 136 00:13:41,767 --> 00:13:44,406 But effeminate luxury had killed it. 137 00:13:45,087 --> 00:13:50,161 Liberty had surrendered to despotism and the Romans had become slaves. 138 00:13:52,167 --> 00:13:57,287 How that message from history echoed in David's fertile brain. 139 00:14:01,007 --> 00:14:05,046 And in 1785, David delivered that message, 140 00:14:05,127 --> 00:14:09,996 like a package of bad news for the complacent and the over-powdered. 141 00:14:12,327 --> 00:14:16,366 Welcome to the first public art show in the world, 142 00:14:16,447 --> 00:14:19,086 in the palace of the Louvre, no less. 143 00:14:19,167 --> 00:14:22,318 This wasn't always a hushed museum. 144 00:14:22,407 --> 00:14:28,721 Every two years, it staged the greatest public entertainment in Paris, and it was free. 145 00:14:34,727 --> 00:14:39,437 Word had got out there was something sensational to see. 146 00:14:40,247 --> 00:14:43,364 Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii. 147 00:14:45,687 --> 00:14:49,282 It's a painting about a country in crisis. 148 00:14:51,047 --> 00:14:54,198 To avoid war, the Romans have chosen three of their men 149 00:14:54,287 --> 00:14:58,803 to fight with three from the enemy. Last one standing wins. 150 00:15:00,887 --> 00:15:06,245 The cruel twist is that one of the Roman boys is married to an enemy girl. 151 00:15:08,327 --> 00:15:11,364 Widowhood and orphanhood beckon. 152 00:15:17,047 --> 00:15:20,881 But none of the men are paying the slightest attention to that. 153 00:15:20,967 --> 00:15:27,566 This is a boys' bonding picture, a tight-packed display of muscle, veins and steel. 154 00:15:27,927 --> 00:15:32,682 The only splash of colour is the blood red of that cape. 155 00:15:37,967 --> 00:15:42,085 The father solemnly swears them to conquer or die, 156 00:15:42,847 --> 00:15:45,680 his naked hand on the sharp blade. 157 00:16:11,487 --> 00:16:17,084 At least 60,000 people would have come to the exhibition to see this painting, 158 00:16:17,167 --> 00:16:21,240 and not just the bigwigs either, but shopkeepers, fishwives, 159 00:16:21,327 --> 00:16:23,921 the whole sweaty, growling public. 160 00:16:24,447 --> 00:16:26,642 They would be David's people. 161 00:16:30,687 --> 00:16:34,362 And they looked at that strange line dance of death, 162 00:16:34,447 --> 00:16:37,883 and they didn't know whether to be thrilled or scared. 163 00:16:42,647 --> 00:16:46,765 It felt like a call to arms in the face of a great crisis. 164 00:16:50,727 --> 00:16:56,006 And that crisis was happening not in ancient Rome, but here and now, 165 00:16:56,087 --> 00:16:58,317 in Louis XVI's France. 166 00:17:01,087 --> 00:17:05,922 It began, as so many revolutions do, with a financial meltdown. 167 00:17:06,927 --> 00:17:11,239 France had taken pride in helping America to win independence, 168 00:17:11,327 --> 00:17:14,239 but it had come at a huge cost. 169 00:17:16,887 --> 00:17:20,800 Avoiding bankruptcy meant more taxes. 170 00:17:23,927 --> 00:17:26,236 So, awkward questions were being asked 171 00:17:26,327 --> 00:17:30,366 about why the nobility and the clergy were tax-exempt, 172 00:17:30,447 --> 00:17:34,281 while the scarecrow poor were supposed to empty their pockets. 173 00:17:35,007 --> 00:17:37,726 Wasn't the nation all in it together? 174 00:17:40,167 --> 00:17:43,682 The nation? Well, that was a new idea. 175 00:17:43,767 --> 00:17:47,885 And while we're at it, how about elected representatives, too? 176 00:17:51,647 --> 00:17:56,163 Oh, it went without saying that the new France would still be a monarchy. 177 00:17:57,207 --> 00:18:00,244 The queen, with all those diamonds, needed putting in her place, 178 00:18:00,327 --> 00:18:02,602 but the king was a good fellow. 179 00:18:05,087 --> 00:18:09,763 No reason to assume a social apocalypse around the corner. 180 00:18:21,927 --> 00:18:28,685 For a while, that's how David himself felt, which didn't mean a little reform wouldn't help. 181 00:18:28,767 --> 00:18:30,837 There was a lot of deadwood around. 182 00:18:30,927 --> 00:18:36,604 For a start, those non-entities at the Academy of Painting, they'd have to go. 183 00:18:37,087 --> 00:18:41,638 When he was a struggling artist, they'd rejected him four times. 184 00:18:41,727 --> 00:18:45,515 Now he was successful, they barely tolerated him. 185 00:18:45,607 --> 00:18:50,317 Well, their time was up. Anyway, he didn't need them any more. 186 00:18:50,407 --> 00:18:53,604 Now he had intelligent, liberal-minded followers. 187 00:19:03,287 --> 00:19:08,315 Here are two of those good eggs, rich, smart and affable. 188 00:19:08,407 --> 00:19:13,401 Mr and Mrs Charming, Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier. 189 00:19:14,327 --> 00:19:16,887 He is a famous experimental chemist. 190 00:19:17,407 --> 00:19:21,036 That flask on the floor is for measuring gases. 191 00:19:22,727 --> 00:19:26,686 Marie-Anne, who'd married him at 13, was more than a wife. 192 00:19:27,207 --> 00:19:31,883 That casual hand on his shoulder tells us she was a true partner, 193 00:19:32,527 --> 00:19:38,045 translating articles from English for him, designing illustrations for his books. 194 00:19:42,487 --> 00:19:46,719 He's filthy rich, but he does have a social conscience. 195 00:19:46,807 --> 00:19:50,436 A lot of his money has been put into draining swamps 196 00:19:50,527 --> 00:19:53,599 to eradicate malaria, that sort of thing. 197 00:19:56,207 --> 00:19:59,722 To look at the portrait, you'd think David has captured a vision 198 00:19:59,807 --> 00:20:03,277 of the kind of people who ought to be governing France, 199 00:20:03,607 --> 00:20:06,440 humane, affectionate and modern. 200 00:20:07,607 --> 00:20:13,443 Well, for 7,000 livres, he wasn't even going to hint at the other Lavoisier, 201 00:20:13,727 --> 00:20:18,403 the one who made money collecting taxes with the help of a private army. 202 00:20:19,527 --> 00:20:25,477 No, David took his fee, but when the time came for him to show the painting at the Louvre, 203 00:20:25,567 --> 00:20:30,243 he ended up withdrawing it. But then he would, wouldn't he? 204 00:20:31,247 --> 00:20:36,879 Between the paint drying and the show opening, everything in France had changed. 205 00:20:38,087 --> 00:20:39,884 It was 1789. 206 00:20:46,407 --> 00:20:49,160 Hope and desperation in equal parts. 207 00:20:50,687 --> 00:20:53,326 Hope from a representative assembly, 208 00:20:53,607 --> 00:20:58,601 the Estate's General elected from thousands of meetings all over France. 209 00:21:03,167 --> 00:21:08,525 But desperation too, because it was happening at the worst possible time. 210 00:21:09,447 --> 00:21:12,644 Harvest wipeouts, soaring prices. 211 00:21:15,007 --> 00:21:18,966 Put hope and desperation together, and what do you get? 212 00:21:19,887 --> 00:21:22,959 The political equivalent of nitroglycerine. 213 00:21:29,247 --> 00:21:35,004 When the Estate's General met here in Versailles, in the spring of 1789, 214 00:21:35,447 --> 00:21:40,396 it all boiled down to one question. Would the deputies do it the old way, 215 00:21:40,487 --> 00:21:43,081 meeting as three separate orders, 216 00:21:43,167 --> 00:21:48,195 nobles, clergy and commoners, or would they do it the new way, 217 00:21:48,287 --> 00:21:52,917 and for the first time come together as a single national assembly? 218 00:21:56,607 --> 00:22:00,646 The commoners, among them a young lawyer, Maximilien Robespierre, 219 00:22:00,727 --> 00:22:02,001 forced the issue, 220 00:22:02,087 --> 00:22:05,523 declaring themselves the only legitimate body, 221 00:22:05,607 --> 00:22:09,043 priests and nobles welcome to join. 222 00:22:09,807 --> 00:22:12,162 A surprising number of them did. 223 00:22:20,087 --> 00:22:24,046 It's the 20th June, 1789, 224 00:22:24,127 --> 00:22:28,359 and it's one of those late-spring torrential downpours. 225 00:22:28,447 --> 00:22:32,679 And the 600 deputies of the Third Estate, the commoners, 226 00:22:32,767 --> 00:22:36,123 plus their new allies among the nobles and the clergy, 227 00:22:36,207 --> 00:22:39,722 have been locked out of their meeting hall. 228 00:22:39,807 --> 00:22:44,722 A certain Doctor Guillotin knows a tennis court quite close by. 229 00:22:47,247 --> 00:22:52,116 The mayor of Paris, Sylvain Bailly, is suddenly the star of the show. 230 00:22:52,727 --> 00:22:57,039 Swear an oath to God and the fatherland never to separate, 231 00:22:57,127 --> 00:23:00,278 until we have made a sound and just constitution. 232 00:23:07,407 --> 00:23:12,845 For the first time, aristocrats, clergy and bourgeoisie were meeting together 233 00:23:12,927 --> 00:23:15,202 without the king's permission. 234 00:23:18,167 --> 00:23:23,480 Arms stretch, bodies embrace, life had caught up with art. 235 00:23:25,807 --> 00:23:29,880 David's Rome reborn was the new France. 236 00:23:36,647 --> 00:23:41,516 A year later, David got to work on his depiction of the Tennis Court Oath. 237 00:23:42,567 --> 00:23:46,640 It's a picture filled with noise. The roar of the oath. 238 00:23:46,727 --> 00:23:49,844 The crash of a great electrical storm. 239 00:23:51,367 --> 00:23:55,679 The Revolution as an unstoppable force of nature. 240 00:24:00,287 --> 00:24:03,882 And at the centre of it all, an enormous space. 241 00:24:04,847 --> 00:24:07,680 Except it's not empty at all. 242 00:24:07,767 --> 00:24:13,364 It's filled with light and rushing wind, the furious energy of liberty. 243 00:24:13,967 --> 00:24:15,639 It's an idea. 244 00:24:15,727 --> 00:24:20,164 An idea so big, it dwarfs the humans who enact it. 245 00:24:37,127 --> 00:24:41,086 The drawing was supposed to be turned into a huge painting. 246 00:24:41,167 --> 00:24:46,958 This is just a small section of it. But as you can see, it was never finished. 247 00:24:47,047 --> 00:24:51,518 Before David even had a chance to put clothes on these nude models, 248 00:24:51,607 --> 00:24:54,758 many of them would be dead or disgraced. 249 00:24:58,607 --> 00:25:03,886 The great message of unity and freedom would soon be quaintly out of date. 250 00:25:05,007 --> 00:25:10,206 Instead of arms outstretched, there was an epidemic of finger-pointing. 251 00:25:14,767 --> 00:25:20,717 July 1789 ought to have been a moment of golden optimism for the reborn France. 252 00:25:21,607 --> 00:25:27,318 Louis XVI seemed finally to have accepted the results of the Tennis Court Oath, 253 00:25:27,407 --> 00:25:30,797 that there was now a National Assembly in France. 254 00:25:30,887 --> 00:25:34,323 But here in the Palais Royale, the Speaker's Corner of Paris, 255 00:25:34,407 --> 00:25:36,238 nobody actually believed him. 256 00:25:36,327 --> 00:25:42,562 People said the king had secretly stocked the fortress of the Bastille with gunpowder, 257 00:25:42,647 --> 00:25:47,277 so Paris was literally a powder keg waiting to happen. 258 00:26:00,327 --> 00:26:07,244 On the morning of July 14th, a crowd of about 900 converged on the grim fortress. 259 00:26:10,247 --> 00:26:16,117 It's always the same, isn't it? Someone panics, there's a first shot. No one knows from where. 260 00:26:16,527 --> 00:26:18,722 Cries of ''Massacre!'' 261 00:26:18,807 --> 00:26:21,844 Then, a serious exchange of fire. 262 00:26:24,567 --> 00:26:30,563 It took an afternoon of chaos and 83 lives before the governor yielded the Bastille. 263 00:26:32,287 --> 00:26:34,847 He was promised safe conduct. 264 00:26:34,927 --> 00:26:39,079 What he got was his head cut off with a fruit knife. 265 00:26:46,247 --> 00:26:50,763 But then, whoever said revolutions were going to be bloodless? 266 00:27:01,287 --> 00:27:05,917 Here's David's contribution to the decapitation campaign. 267 00:27:06,727 --> 00:27:09,321 It's the darkest thing he ever did. 268 00:27:12,087 --> 00:27:14,840 It's a Roman father again. 269 00:27:15,007 --> 00:27:16,963 Brutus, brooding in the darkness, 270 00:27:17,047 --> 00:27:22,599 has ordered the execution of his sons, for plotting to bring back the monarchy. 271 00:27:23,807 --> 00:27:28,517 Their headless bodies are brought to him, and he literally doesn't look back. 272 00:27:35,767 --> 00:27:40,397 Only that right foot is a sign of his repressed emotion. 273 00:27:44,687 --> 00:27:47,565 Brutus has gone to the dark side. 274 00:27:50,127 --> 00:27:55,565 Light floods the boys' mother, who sees only her headless children. 275 00:27:58,567 --> 00:28:01,001 You feel the tug of the heart. 276 00:28:15,887 --> 00:28:20,403 There's something chilling about this painting, like all David's great pictures. 277 00:28:20,487 --> 00:28:25,720 Even as you marvel at its brilliance, your blood runs cold at what it's saying. 278 00:28:26,047 --> 00:28:28,845 Look what's at the dead centre of the picture, 279 00:28:28,927 --> 00:28:34,923 a pair of sharp scissors, the hard, cold metal that's cut the family ties. 280 00:28:38,047 --> 00:28:40,959 David seems to have a thing about blades. 281 00:28:41,047 --> 00:28:44,801 They've marked his face and now they've marked his mind. 282 00:28:50,727 --> 00:28:54,515 From father to fatherland is but a short step. 283 00:28:55,607 --> 00:29:02,046 The first two years of the Revolution swung wildly from mass euphoria to paranoia, 284 00:29:04,087 --> 00:29:09,366 orgies of public hugging, spasms of vindictive lynching. 285 00:29:41,327 --> 00:29:45,525 Why the anger? Because people were still hungry. 286 00:29:45,607 --> 00:29:48,405 Bread prices had gone through the roof, 287 00:29:48,487 --> 00:29:51,797 and people had discovered you couldn't eat votes. 288 00:29:51,887 --> 00:29:54,196 Someone was to blame. 289 00:29:58,287 --> 00:30:02,917 ''The baker and the baker's wife', the jeering market women called them, 290 00:30:03,007 --> 00:30:08,798 as they dragged Louis and Marie Antoinette out of the safety of Versailles, to Paris. 291 00:30:10,887 --> 00:30:15,119 The queen, they said, was no better than an Austrian whore. 292 00:30:15,687 --> 00:30:17,723 David thought the same. 293 00:30:17,847 --> 00:30:22,921 ''The rioters should have strangled her, cut the carcass to pieces, ''he wrote. 294 00:30:26,647 --> 00:30:31,357 He was at this time an odd mix of dogma and uncertainty. 295 00:30:31,967 --> 00:30:35,755 Like millions of his countrymen, he thought the queen was a monster, 296 00:30:35,847 --> 00:30:40,045 but he hadn't given up on the idea of Louis as citizen king. 297 00:30:40,127 --> 00:30:43,005 He even signed up to do a portrait of him. 298 00:30:44,247 --> 00:30:48,160 So he was still very much a political ingénue, 299 00:30:48,247 --> 00:30:51,717 until, that is, he met the likes of him. 300 00:30:55,207 --> 00:31:01,806 Jean-Paul Marat, balloonist, failed inventor, newspaper editor, fanatic. 301 00:31:03,767 --> 00:31:05,485 Here he is in his bath, 302 00:31:05,567 --> 00:31:11,164 the only place he could get respite from the excruciatingly itchy skin disease 303 00:31:11,287 --> 00:31:13,960 that left him raw and scaly. 304 00:31:14,847 --> 00:31:17,805 Marat played on hysteria like a drum. 305 00:31:18,207 --> 00:31:23,122 His paper, The Friend of the People, yelled and cursed and denounced, 306 00:31:23,207 --> 00:31:28,361 ripping off the masks of false patriots whom he fingered as traitors. 307 00:31:29,527 --> 00:31:32,405 ''There are plots everywhere, ''he screamed. 308 00:31:37,007 --> 00:31:42,639 The street, caught between fear and hyperventilation, ate up the conspiracy theories. 309 00:31:43,127 --> 00:31:46,199 Marie Antoinette, malevolent slut, 310 00:31:46,287 --> 00:31:50,280 plotting with her brother, the Emperor of Austria, against France. 311 00:31:51,287 --> 00:31:52,606 Imagine. 312 00:31:55,327 --> 00:31:57,636 Except it was true. 313 00:31:57,727 --> 00:32:02,721 In June, 1791 , the royal couple was caught in their escape bid 314 00:32:02,807 --> 00:32:06,482 and taken back, virtual prisoners, to Paris. 315 00:32:08,647 --> 00:32:15,120 Austria threatened France with dire consequences should anything happen to the king and queen. 316 00:32:15,607 --> 00:32:19,566 Now, the royal couple seem like the enemy within. 317 00:32:22,327 --> 00:32:25,364 The following year, war broke out, 318 00:32:26,127 --> 00:32:30,359 and their days, and the days of the French monarchy, were numbered. 319 00:32:39,167 --> 00:32:44,685 Now, fighting for France meant fighting against royalty. 320 00:32:52,167 --> 00:32:56,797 Five days after the war started, in April, 1792, 321 00:32:56,927 --> 00:33:01,318 there was a dinner in the garrison town of Strasbourg, near the front. 322 00:33:02,047 --> 00:33:05,960 The idea was to boost the shaky morale of the army. 323 00:33:06,087 --> 00:33:09,557 So, there were toasts, there were speeches. 324 00:33:09,647 --> 00:33:14,198 ''Long live liberty'', ''Death to tyrants'', the usual thing. 325 00:33:14,687 --> 00:33:17,326 What was missing, though, was a good song 326 00:33:17,407 --> 00:33:21,923 that would send a surge of self-belief right through the camp. 327 00:33:22,607 --> 00:33:28,159 It was Rouget de Lisle, regimental engineer and part-time composer, 328 00:33:28,247 --> 00:33:31,080 who came up with that song. 329 00:34:17,887 --> 00:34:21,004 You belong to something glorious now. 330 00:34:21,087 --> 00:34:24,204 You belong to the Patrie, the fatherland. 331 00:34:30,647 --> 00:34:31,636 MAN: Everything is in motion. 332 00:34:31,727 --> 00:34:36,278 Everyone burns to fight. To conquer our enemies, 333 00:34:37,567 --> 00:34:44,245 we must have daring, more daring, always daring. And France will be saved! 334 00:34:52,247 --> 00:34:57,879 In August, 1792, the guards protecting the royal family were slaughtered, 335 00:34:59,167 --> 00:35:03,718 Louis, Marie Antoinette and their children were taken to prison. 336 00:35:11,967 --> 00:35:17,485 One must never compromise with tyrants. One can only strike at kings through the head. 337 00:35:17,567 --> 00:35:19,683 I vote for death of the tyrant. 338 00:35:25,847 --> 00:35:28,486 You're a very ordinary man. 339 00:35:32,847 --> 00:35:39,116 On January 21st, 1793, Louis XVI was executed. 340 00:35:45,727 --> 00:35:49,197 Among those in the newly formed National Convention 341 00:35:49,287 --> 00:35:51,403 who voted for the death of the monarch, 342 00:35:51,487 --> 00:35:54,877 was the artist who'd once taken commissions from him, 343 00:35:54,967 --> 00:35:57,322 Jacques-Louis David. 344 00:36:24,647 --> 00:36:27,798 So France had been reborn as a republic, 345 00:36:27,887 --> 00:36:30,003 and David, now a model citizen, 346 00:36:30,087 --> 00:36:34,365 sat proudly on the benches of the convention as MP for Paris, 347 00:36:34,447 --> 00:36:38,235 along with his political idols, Marat and Robespierre. 348 00:36:43,407 --> 00:36:45,284 There was no going back. 349 00:36:45,367 --> 00:36:49,645 From now on, David and his art belonged to the Revolution. 350 00:36:51,967 --> 00:36:54,606 Wherever it lead, he would follow, 351 00:36:54,687 --> 00:36:57,645 and where it lead was dictatorship. 352 00:37:01,127 --> 00:37:06,247 The country was at war, its enemies were outside and inside France. 353 00:37:07,207 --> 00:37:10,040 This was no time for tender feelings. 354 00:37:13,327 --> 00:37:16,717 Countless people who had thought of themselves as friends, 355 00:37:16,807 --> 00:37:21,164 not enemies, of the Revolution, were fingered and denounced. 356 00:37:26,407 --> 00:37:30,844 Among the first to be arrested were his old friends and patrons, 357 00:37:30,927 --> 00:37:33,487 Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier. 358 00:37:36,007 --> 00:37:38,567 She survived the guillotine, 359 00:37:39,167 --> 00:37:40,805 he didn't. 360 00:37:50,407 --> 00:37:55,879 For Marat and Robespierre, there could never be enough guillotined heads to feel safe. 361 00:37:56,887 --> 00:38:01,039 In 1789, Marat had called for a few hundred. 362 00:38:01,127 --> 00:38:04,597 Now, he called for hundreds of thousands. 363 00:38:14,727 --> 00:38:19,323 Someone had to stop it, and that someone was Charlotte Corday, 364 00:38:19,447 --> 00:38:23,076 25 years old, from the town of Caen in Normandy. 365 00:38:24,527 --> 00:38:27,678 No royalist. A revolutionary, in fact. 366 00:38:28,247 --> 00:38:31,523 But a bitter enemy of Marat and his followers. 367 00:38:33,487 --> 00:38:38,641 The dictatorship, she thought, had made a mockery of the Republic of Liberty. 368 00:38:42,087 --> 00:38:47,764 She cast herself as a tragic heroine whose destiny was to save her country. 369 00:38:51,247 --> 00:38:57,880 On the 9th July, 1793, Charlotte Corday got on a coach bound for Paris. 370 00:39:03,647 --> 00:39:07,322 When she arrived, she came here to the Palais Royale, 371 00:39:07,407 --> 00:39:11,923 bought a black hat with green feathers and a six-inch knife. 372 00:39:16,807 --> 00:39:19,560 In a cheap hotel room, she wrote a speech 373 00:39:19,647 --> 00:39:24,038 explaining why she had to kill Marat and sewed it to her dress, 374 00:39:24,127 --> 00:39:27,005 along with her certificate of baptism. 375 00:39:35,567 --> 00:39:38,206 And as Corday was planning the murder, 376 00:39:38,287 --> 00:39:41,723 David was paying his friend Marat a visit. 377 00:39:42,327 --> 00:39:44,841 He found him propped up in his bath, 378 00:39:44,927 --> 00:39:49,523 using an upturned wooden box as an improvised desk. 379 00:39:51,167 --> 00:39:55,683 So little time, so many traitors to denounce. 380 00:39:59,247 --> 00:40:03,399 Did the Friend of the People ever rest from his patriotic toil? 381 00:40:07,727 --> 00:40:13,165 The next day, Charlotte Corday walked over to Marat's house on the rue des Cordeliers. 382 00:40:13,247 --> 00:40:18,958 Barred at the door, she tried delivering a handwritten note warning him about plots, 383 00:40:19,047 --> 00:40:23,245 hoping he was gonna rise to the bait. No reply. 384 00:40:26,767 --> 00:40:29,520 That evening, she tried again. 385 00:40:30,287 --> 00:40:35,077 As she arrived, two men were delivering bread and newspapers. 386 00:40:36,167 --> 00:40:38,078 She was in. 387 00:40:41,087 --> 00:40:46,559 Corday pretended she was an informer and gave Marat a list of traitors. 388 00:40:48,127 --> 00:40:51,483 ''I will have them guillotined in a week'', he said. 389 00:40:54,527 --> 00:40:56,358 And that was it. 390 00:40:57,167 --> 00:41:01,922 Out came the knife, straight into Marat's chest. 391 00:41:11,847 --> 00:41:16,204 So the Friend of the People was lost to the Revolution. 392 00:41:16,767 --> 00:41:21,921 Inside the National Convention, grief-stricken deputies cried their eyes out, 393 00:41:22,007 --> 00:41:23,918 authentically or not. 394 00:41:24,487 --> 00:41:28,878 What they most wanted, I think, was for Marat to come back to them. 395 00:41:28,967 --> 00:41:33,722 ''Come back, come back. We need you, all of France needs you.'' 396 00:41:34,327 --> 00:41:40,516 And then one of the most theatrical deputies rose to his feet and shouted, 397 00:41:40,647 --> 00:41:45,198 ''David, where are you? There is one more job for you.'' 398 00:41:49,727 --> 00:41:54,562 And David of the swollen cheek miraculously found his voice. 399 00:41:55,087 --> 00:41:56,202 I shall do it. 400 00:41:56,287 --> 00:41:57,925 ''I shall do it, ''he said. 401 00:42:00,087 --> 00:42:02,282 ''I will paint Marat. '' 402 00:42:17,727 --> 00:42:21,515 It was midsummer, the hottest in anyone's memory. 403 00:42:24,767 --> 00:42:29,238 The embalmers, under David's direction, were working overtime, 404 00:42:29,327 --> 00:42:32,160 preparing Marat's body for the funeral. 405 00:42:33,447 --> 00:42:38,282 But his normally ghastly red-flesh colour was rapidly turning green. 406 00:42:43,247 --> 00:42:49,277 David had wanted Marat displayed sitting upright, working for the good of the people. 407 00:42:49,967 --> 00:42:53,721 But the decomposing corpse refused to co-operate. 408 00:42:54,847 --> 00:43:01,320 Drenched in perfume, it had to be laid flat out for the grieving public to file past. 409 00:43:17,487 --> 00:43:21,526 The funeral would inevitably fade in people's memory. 410 00:43:22,087 --> 00:43:24,885 The painting, though, would never fade. 411 00:43:30,967 --> 00:43:33,686 It was Marat's best revenge, 412 00:43:33,767 --> 00:43:37,840 for it would make sure that he would always be around. 413 00:43:43,887 --> 00:43:50,520 Here was someone transfigured by goodness, honesty and patriotic selflessness. 414 00:43:51,847 --> 00:43:57,638 ''Look upon him,'' David is saying, ''And you will see the highest type of humanity.'' 415 00:44:11,367 --> 00:44:13,597 He's cleaned Marat up, of course. 416 00:44:13,687 --> 00:44:17,282 The skin has the colour of cool stone, 417 00:44:18,607 --> 00:44:24,045 the wound is unmissable, yet at the same time almost delicate, 418 00:44:24,127 --> 00:44:27,836 like the incision in the side of Christ on the cross. 419 00:44:31,447 --> 00:44:34,439 The white sheets seem shroud-like, 420 00:44:34,527 --> 00:44:40,523 ghostly wrappings of the great man as he hovers between our world and posterity. 421 00:44:46,567 --> 00:44:49,320 It's a cult image, 422 00:44:49,407 --> 00:44:52,240 and it tells you to believe. 423 00:44:59,687 --> 00:45:05,080 Its genius lies in the fact that it's also a story for the people. 424 00:45:05,167 --> 00:45:08,637 For once, the hero isn't Roman, he's one of them. 425 00:45:08,727 --> 00:45:12,083 It's the first great work for the faces in the crowd, 426 00:45:12,167 --> 00:45:14,601 the singers of the Marseillaise. 427 00:45:14,687 --> 00:45:20,159 You can almost feel David imagining whole families in front of this painting, 428 00:45:20,247 --> 00:45:24,718 a father saying to his children, ''Look, there's his inkwell." 429 00:45:24,807 --> 00:45:31,121 ''Look, there's the letter of the wicked Corday, stained with the blood of the good Marat.'' 430 00:45:35,527 --> 00:45:40,647 But David is not showing the letter that got Corday into Marat's house, 431 00:45:40,727 --> 00:45:42,957 the one with the list of traitors. 432 00:45:43,367 --> 00:45:45,085 It's a different letter. 433 00:45:45,167 --> 00:45:49,445 One that would make Marat seem like a victim of his own kindness. 434 00:45:51,087 --> 00:45:57,435 ''It's enough that I am truly unhappy to have the right to your benevolence, '' it says. 435 00:45:59,407 --> 00:46:05,642 On top of the box is another letter, from the widow of a soldier fallen in battle. 436 00:46:05,727 --> 00:46:09,925 With it is a donation Marat is about to send her. 437 00:46:11,327 --> 00:46:15,479 Two women, then, the good mother and the bad Corday. 438 00:46:18,727 --> 00:46:22,242 There's no attempt to give a sense of Marat's room here. 439 00:46:22,367 --> 00:46:26,679 No crossed pistols hanging on the wall, no fake columns. 440 00:46:27,727 --> 00:46:33,643 Instead, the entire top half of the painting is filled with loose, feathery strokes 441 00:46:33,727 --> 00:46:37,845 that could be wall or just indeterminate space. 442 00:46:39,727 --> 00:46:41,877 The space of forever. 443 00:46:48,807 --> 00:46:52,800 But then that box, grainy, solid. 444 00:46:54,327 --> 00:46:59,765 ''He was one of you, '' the box says. ''One of the poor and suffering. 445 00:47:03,007 --> 00:47:04,998 ''But now you can't reach him. 446 00:47:05,087 --> 00:47:09,126 ''No one can, except through this. '' 447 00:47:15,647 --> 00:47:18,286 But even while you're held spellbound, 448 00:47:18,367 --> 00:47:21,757 another voice inside your head says, ''Hold on a minute," 449 00:47:21,847 --> 00:47:24,281 ''this is the purest witchcraft.'' 450 00:47:24,447 --> 00:47:28,963 What David has done here is to glorify a paranoid, 451 00:47:29,047 --> 00:47:33,484 whose greatest satisfaction was the persecution of thousands of people 452 00:47:33,567 --> 00:47:38,482 whose only crime was to be lukewarm about politics. 453 00:47:38,567 --> 00:47:41,639 This is an accomplice of terror. 454 00:48:01,247 --> 00:48:05,923 Of course, it never occurred to David that he was betraying art. 455 00:48:06,007 --> 00:48:11,035 ''Oh, no,'' he would have said. ''I'm fulfilling its highest, noblest purpose," 456 00:48:11,607 --> 00:48:14,280 ''that of moral re-education." 457 00:48:20,367 --> 00:48:24,485 ''That's what all those altarpieces that once hung in churches did," 458 00:48:25,207 --> 00:48:29,598 ''but those were all lies and fairytales." 459 00:48:33,327 --> 00:48:37,878 ''We have a new church now, the church of revolutionary virtue. '' 460 00:48:42,407 --> 00:48:45,001 So why do I like David? 461 00:48:45,087 --> 00:48:47,806 Well, I don't. He's a monster. 462 00:48:47,887 --> 00:48:51,436 But he makes ideas blaze in dry ice. 463 00:48:51,527 --> 00:48:55,839 He is a fantastic propagandist, no one better. 464 00:48:55,927 --> 00:48:59,840 Albert Speer could just as well roll over and die. 465 00:49:03,647 --> 00:49:05,797 And what was the point of it all? 466 00:49:05,887 --> 00:49:10,677 Well, it's a revenge on wit, on chat and on banter. 467 00:49:12,247 --> 00:49:14,078 But it was more than that. 468 00:49:14,167 --> 00:49:19,321 This is art designed to make those who saw it virtuous citizens. 469 00:49:22,647 --> 00:49:29,280 And it's all so perfect, so tragic, so poetic you almost believe it. 470 00:49:31,487 --> 00:49:35,526 But like a lot of art designed to improve humanity, 471 00:49:35,607 --> 00:49:37,882 it has the opposite effect. 472 00:49:40,527 --> 00:49:42,836 Because it's a lie. 473 00:50:00,767 --> 00:50:03,964 Three months after the assassination of Marat, 474 00:50:04,047 --> 00:50:09,758 on October 16th, 1793, Marie Antoinette went to the guillotine. 475 00:50:11,087 --> 00:50:14,397 David saw her tumbrel going down the street, 476 00:50:14,527 --> 00:50:16,802 while people spat in their hands 477 00:50:16,887 --> 00:50:21,483 and tried to throw the gobs on the woman who'd been queen. 478 00:50:22,327 --> 00:50:24,921 He sketched her impassively. 479 00:50:31,847 --> 00:50:37,319 But David's got more important things on his mind than the fate of Marie Antoinette. 480 00:50:37,407 --> 00:50:41,798 He's now the official director of revolutionary propaganda, 481 00:50:42,207 --> 00:50:45,882 to the exclusion of practically everything else. 482 00:50:48,087 --> 00:50:52,444 When his wife disapproved of his zeal, he divorced her. 483 00:50:56,367 --> 00:51:01,919 David has become an enforcer, sitting on the Committee for General Security, 484 00:51:02,007 --> 00:51:07,843 hunting down the treacherously half-hearted, signing warrants for their execution. 485 00:51:24,087 --> 00:51:26,203 The terror had begun, 486 00:51:26,287 --> 00:51:30,724 and David had become part of the great engine of killing. 487 00:51:34,127 --> 00:51:37,881 And as the tempo of the guillotine got faster, 488 00:51:38,247 --> 00:51:44,482 David busied himself with ever more extravagant spectacles to educate the people. 489 00:51:46,247 --> 00:51:52,516 Casts of thousands, massed singing virgins, statues on the site of the Bastille. 490 00:51:53,687 --> 00:51:57,123 A festival of the supreme being, 491 00:51:57,207 --> 00:52:02,281 starring the high priest of the Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre. 492 00:52:06,247 --> 00:52:10,206 In the end, David was a victim of his own success. 493 00:52:10,287 --> 00:52:14,997 The hard-nosed men who were running the war knew that bread and guns mattered, 494 00:52:15,087 --> 00:52:17,601 and virgins and doves didn't. 495 00:52:17,687 --> 00:52:22,317 So David wasn't just a distraction, he was a menace. Get rid of him. 496 00:52:25,927 --> 00:52:31,399 And David's downfall was inextricably linked to the fate of Robespierre. 497 00:52:32,367 --> 00:52:35,086 Increasingly, Robespierre was spoken of 498 00:52:35,167 --> 00:52:39,445 not as saviour of the Revolution, but tyrant, 499 00:52:39,527 --> 00:52:45,159 and David, the window-dresser of his tyranny, was going down with him. 500 00:52:46,487 --> 00:52:52,960 Robespierre was attacked in the Convention, the dreaded words ''outside the law'' uttered. 501 00:52:55,087 --> 00:52:59,239 Incredulous, David made a spectacle of himself. 502 00:52:59,327 --> 00:53:01,238 ''Robespierre,'' he shouted. 503 00:53:01,327 --> 00:53:05,036 ''If you drink the hemlock, I will drink it with you. '' 504 00:53:08,327 --> 00:53:10,204 But of course, he didn't. 505 00:53:10,727 --> 00:53:17,200 The next day, David was suddenly indisposed, so he missed his own date with martyrdom. 506 00:53:17,287 --> 00:53:20,836 He was not there beside Robespierre when he was guillotined 507 00:53:20,927 --> 00:53:24,283 and the blade at last came down on the terror. 508 00:53:24,767 --> 00:53:27,645 But they came for David, nonetheless. 509 00:53:31,847 --> 00:53:37,399 Vilified as tyrant of the arts, David tried to stammer a defence. 510 00:53:38,167 --> 00:53:43,764 No one could understand what he was saying, but they noticed how pale he was, 511 00:53:44,887 --> 00:53:49,756 how the sweat ran through his clothes and dripped onto the floor. 512 00:53:54,967 --> 00:54:00,644 In prison, he managed to get hold of some paints and he painted this self-portrait. 513 00:54:02,167 --> 00:54:07,560 You can see the famous tumour and the twist it gives to his face, 514 00:54:07,647 --> 00:54:10,605 but that's as far as the truth goes. 515 00:54:11,407 --> 00:54:16,083 Because what we're seeing is not the old propaganda master, that's for sure, 516 00:54:16,327 --> 00:54:20,115 but young David, 20 years at least taken off, 517 00:54:20,967 --> 00:54:24,926 all innocent, hair romantically dishevelled, 518 00:54:25,487 --> 00:54:30,561 coat open to expose his pure, transparent heart. 519 00:54:32,247 --> 00:54:35,876 And he's done himself with palette and brushes. 520 00:54:36,767 --> 00:54:38,678 ''Why me?'' it says. 521 00:54:38,767 --> 00:54:40,439 ''I'm just a painter. '' 522 00:54:47,007 --> 00:54:48,963 Yeah, right. 523 00:54:49,047 --> 00:54:52,562 Led astray, were you? Just doing your job? 524 00:54:52,647 --> 00:54:54,524 I don't think so. 525 00:54:59,487 --> 00:55:03,480 But guess what? The art plea worked. 526 00:55:04,087 --> 00:55:05,839 David got out of prison, 527 00:55:05,927 --> 00:55:12,321 and spent the next years doing spectacular, uncontroversial portraits like this. 528 00:55:13,327 --> 00:55:16,444 Monsieur Seriziat, his brother-in-law. 529 00:55:18,007 --> 00:55:22,398 This is what the Revolution of the virtuous had become, 530 00:55:22,887 --> 00:55:27,563 the Republican tricolour reduced to a fashion accessory. 531 00:55:29,447 --> 00:55:33,599 When he does do history paintings, they're pleas to stop killing. 532 00:55:34,887 --> 00:55:39,483 No more politics, then, for Jacques-Louis David, right? 533 00:55:48,287 --> 00:55:49,879 Wrong. 534 00:55:49,967 --> 00:55:52,765 The old demon never really goes away. 535 00:55:53,927 --> 00:55:57,237 Once bitten by power, you stay bitten. 536 00:55:57,727 --> 00:56:03,882 He airbrushed Marat, why shouldn't he airbrush Napoleon? 537 00:56:14,087 --> 00:56:18,126 When Napoleon was crowned emperor in 1805, 538 00:56:18,207 --> 00:56:23,156 David was slavishly at his side, official glamoriser. 539 00:56:25,167 --> 00:56:29,843 But then, of course, Napoleon was defeated, the monarchy restored. 540 00:56:31,407 --> 00:56:34,160 Lots of Napoleon-lovers were forgiven, 541 00:56:36,567 --> 00:56:38,364 but not David. 542 00:56:41,847 --> 00:56:45,396 He'd done something that could never be forgiven. 543 00:56:47,767 --> 00:56:50,201 He'd done this, 544 00:56:50,287 --> 00:56:54,121 the most notorious image produced by the terror. 545 00:56:59,687 --> 00:57:03,600 France had had enough of Jacques-Louis David. 546 00:57:09,407 --> 00:57:14,083 Banished from his own country, David ended up here in Brussels, 547 00:57:14,167 --> 00:57:18,877 where he did paintings of increasingly high-gloss weirdness, 548 00:57:18,967 --> 00:57:22,118 a big fish in a very small pond. 549 00:57:23,007 --> 00:57:26,886 In France, they mostly talked about him as a back number, 550 00:57:26,967 --> 00:57:30,676 ''Oh, David, Brutus and all that. Isn't he dead?'' 551 00:57:33,807 --> 00:57:37,197 When he did die, in December, 1825, 552 00:57:37,287 --> 00:57:42,645 the government in Paris refused permission for his family to bring the body home. 553 00:57:43,607 --> 00:57:45,916 No king-killers allowed. 554 00:57:49,767 --> 00:57:53,601 David's paintings, though, were up for sale. 555 00:57:53,687 --> 00:58:00,081 Before that, they were put on public display. Not, however, the notorious Marat. 556 00:58:01,887 --> 00:58:05,721 That was kept under guard at the artist's son's house. 557 00:58:06,207 --> 00:58:09,199 Admission by private arrangement. 558 00:58:12,607 --> 00:58:15,997 And you take a look at it and you know why. 559 00:58:16,887 --> 00:58:21,756 If ever there was a work of art that says that beauty can be lethal, 560 00:58:22,407 --> 00:58:26,036 it's Jacques-Louis David's Death of Marat.