“L. David faciebat Romae”: The Brick Walls in the Oath of the Horatii

Abstract

Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii (1784) caused a sensation at the Salon in Paris in 1785, and it has garnered a great amount of attention ever since (fig. 1). Observers have closely analyzed the work, especially the genesis of the composition and its meaning and reception in the charged critical and political atmosphere in late eighteenth-century France. Heidi E. Kraus has studied David’s overall interest in ancient Roman architecture and its moral and artistic meaning for him. We might focus here on a neglected yet meaningful element in the Oath of the Horatii, namely, the bricks and stucco surface on the walls. This aspect of the picture serves a number of purposes: it attests to David’s