The Death of Seneca

In 1773 the young Jacques-Louis David was trying, for the third time, to win the Prix de Rome, the prize that sent the best student to Italy at the state's expense. The set subject was the death of Seneca, the Roman philosopher ordered by the emperor Nero to take his own life, shown here opening his veins among a swirl of anxious figures. It is a crowded, richly coloured, almost theatrical picture in the Rococo taste of the moment, and it lost. The jury preferred a darker, plainer, more severe version of the same scene by a rival, Pierre Peyron. David won the prize only the following year. The stiff, stripped-down Roman manner he became famous for is the opposite of the crowded warmth you are looking at here.