Self-portrait with three collars

David painted this in 1791, with the French Revolution two years old and himself right at the center of it. He was already the most admired painter in France, the man who had made severe, high-minded pictures of ancient Roman virtue fashionable, and he was turning that seriousness toward the new republic. Within a year he would be elected to the revolutionary Convention. Here he looks out plainly, no wig, no powder, no gold, in a coat with the stacked collars that gave the picture its French nickname, the three collars. The bare background and cool, exact light are the same discipline he preached in his history paintings, now turned on his own face. In 1793 he would vote for the execution of the king, and paint the revolutionary Marat lying dead in his bath.