Léonidas aux Thermopyles

David worked on this canvas on and off for 15 years, and he finished it in 1814, the year foreign armies were crossing into France to bring down Napoleon. That timing changes the picture. The Spartan king Leonidas sits calm at the centre, knowing he and his 300 men will die holding the pass at Thermopylae against a vast Persian army. On the left a soldier carves the famous epitaph into the rock, the message to Sparta that they fell obeying her laws. David, who had once served the Revolution and then Napoleon, was painting defeat as something noble at the very moment his own empire collapsed. Napoleon had earlier told him nobody wins by standing still, but David gave him stillness anyway.