Retrato de Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier e sua Esposa

David signed this in 1788, a year before the Revolution, and you can feel him deciding how to present a couple who were both brilliant and dangerously rich. Antoine Lavoisier was remaking chemistry, naming oxygen, proving that matter is conserved. Marie-Anne, his wife, kept the lab notebooks and etched the illustrations for his books, and she is the one who commissioned this from David, her old drawing teacher. He surrounds them with gleaming glass instruments rather than the trappings of wealth. But X-rays have since shown a first version underneath, where the pair wore luxury clothes and a great plumed hat, and the table was set with the tools of the tax office that made their fortune. David painted over it. It did not save Lavoisier. In 1794 the same office sent him to the guillotine.