Public Art

The ideal of public art fostered by Jacques-Louis David was embraced by painters in France and Spain in the period 1780 to 1830. This was a political art, based on the ideals of the Enlightenment, which engaged in criticism or praise of the state. But in this extremely volatile period shifts in politics, transformations of the state, and changes of leaders in the two countries meant that this highly political art did not always meet David's ideal. Depending on the state of politics the times could call for praise or blame of the leadership or would allow more or less explicit critiques by painters. An examination of four examples of public art from this period shows how painters sought to promote Enlightenment ideals despite great differences in the political circumstances to which they responded. A comparison of David's Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (1789) and his Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass (1800) demonstrates the differences between a painter in opposition to the government and a painter endorsing a new version of the state. A further comparison of works by Francisco Goya, The Family of the Duque de Osuna (1788), and EugFne Delacroix, The Massacre at Scio (1824), demonstrates the difference between approaches to public art in which the precise target of praise or opposition was much more difficult to define than in David's situation on the eve of the French Revolution and at the dawn of the Napoleonic era.

ree than anyone could predict in 1800. But even if he did not know that "political legitimacy would devolve into the charisma of one man," David was clearly faced with a new problem for which his old style was ill-equipped (Crow 44). Formerly David's public art managed to combine "daring political allusion with impeccable command of the Classical tradition" but being in Napoleon's service required praise and the expression of the conviction (though it was more like a hope) that Napoleon would uphold the ideals for which the country had endured so much turmoil (Crow 16). The problem David faced was both political and aesthetic. His Classical style was not suited to the depiction of current events and persons and the absence of any need to disguise his commentary appears to have wasted his rhetorical powers. In the 1800 portrait of Napoleon David had to adapt his style to the "rhetorical requirements of leadership" and his composition is a pastiche of Classical form and a sort of proto-Romantic glorification of the individual that is not particularly successful (Crow 43). The swirls of drapery, clouds, and horse-hair seem frozen by David's precise linear style of painting and they remain "superficial effects laid over an obd