La Justice et la Vengeance Divine poursuivant le Crime

This was painted to hang in a courtroom. The prefect of Paris, Nicolas Frochot, commissioned it for the hall of the criminal court at the Palais de Justice, where it would look down on real trials. A murderer flees across a rocky waste by moonlight, leaving his stripped victim behind, while two figures come after him through the clouds, Justice with her sword and scales and, torch raised, Divine Vengeance. The message was plain to anyone brought before the judges: crime does not get away. Napoleon pinned the Legion d'honneur on Prud'hon when the picture appeared at the Salon of 1808. He gave the guilty man the heavy features of the Roman emperor Caracalla, remembered for murdering his own brother.