Der Schwur der Horatier

David painted this in Rome and unveiled it in 1784, five years before the French Revolution, and it landed like a call to order. The subject is an old Roman story, three brothers swearing to their father that they will fight and die for the city, their arms flung out toward the swords he holds up. On the right the women slump, grieving, because they have family on both sides of the coming duel. David sets the hard straight lines of the men against the soft curves of the women, and lights the whole thing like a stage under three sharp arches. Painted for the king, it soon read as something else entirely, duty to the state above private feeling, and a generation about to overthrow that king took it as their own.