球戯場の誓い

In June 1789 the deputies of the new National Assembly found their meeting hall in Versailles locked, and crowded instead into a bare indoor tennis court nearby, where they swore not to separate until France had a constitution. Jacques-Louis David set out to paint that oath on an enormous canvas, some 4 by 7 metres, with the deputies' arms flung up toward one figure at the centre. Then the Revolution overtook the picture. Men he had already sketched in as heroes were guillotined or disgraced within a few years, the subscription money dried up, and David himself was sitting as a deputy with no time to paint. So the great canvas was never finished. What survives at Versailles is mostly outline and underpainting, a handful of nude figures worked up and the rest left as ghostly chalk, a monument to a moment that curdled faster than the paint could dry.