Andromache Mourning Hector

David presented this in 1783 as his reception piece for the French royal academy of painting, the ambitious work meant to prove he belonged among its members, and it duly won him election the following year. It takes a moment from Homer: Andromache mourning over the body of her husband Hector, the Trojan prince killed by Achilles, while their small son Astyanax reaches up toward her. David strips the scene almost bare, a single lamp, the pale corpse laid out, the grieving widow, all in the severe classical manner he was making his own. Within a few years that austere style would be read as the visual language of the coming French Revolution, in which David took an active part.