Der Almosen erbittende Belisar

David sent this to the Paris Salon of 1781, fresh back from years in Italy, and it made him. The subject is Belisarius, the Byzantine general who won great victories for the emperor Justinian and was then, according to legend, blinded and left to beg in the street. David shows him seated, hand out, a child at his side, while a passing soldier recognises the ruined commander he once served. The public and the academy both took to it, and it looks nothing like the light, flirtatious painting Paris had grown used to. The forms are grave, the light is cool, the story is about an unjust ruler destroying the man who served him. Eight years before the Revolution, a picture of a great servant of the state cast out and begging carried a charge that did not need spelling out. It hangs today in Lille.