The bronze cools and the plaster mold is broken. The sculpture is cleaned, ground and welded to blend the surface texture. Finally, the bronze sculpture is treated with chemicals and heat to give it color or "patina" when it reacts with the air (Hatcher 72-74). Now one can easily see all the creativity, time and resources that went into this sculpture. How different from Rodin's sculpture is this second piece of art, "The Oath of Horatii" by Jacques-Louis David. In about 1781, very early in his career as artist, David started thinking about the Horatii from a play dealing with Ancient Roman history: The Roman Horatii (named after legendary triplets) and the Alban Curatii were chosen to fight each other to death in order to determine the stronger town. The two families fighting were related by marriage, so it would be a tragedy no matter who was victor. Horatii won the battle, returned from combat, and was met by his sister Camilla, who cursed him for killing her lover. Horatii became very angry and killed Camilla, but was acquitted on an appeal by his father to the people of Rome. David originally thought of painting the slaying of Camilla, then the father pleading in front of the Roman people. Finally, he imagined his own scene with father pleading to the Roman soldiers and women watching and crying because of the deaths they know will come in the future of their brothers and husbands (Eitner 19).

It is said that David followed the Gavin Hamilton Oath of Brutus. Like Rodin's the Thinker which was interpreted in different ways, it is believed that David did not do this as a political piece, because he was still young and strongly patriotic. However, in the future it was interpreted by some people after the revolution as a premature republican statement (Eitner 21). The...

It was exhibited with great success in David's and was greatly admired. David was recognized as France's foremost painter.
The figures in the painting are lit from the left and standing out against the dark background. There are three separate scenes -- the three Horatii, stand on the left in a military pose and face their father who is in the middle of the painting blessing them with his right hand and raising three swords with his left hand. In the third scene, the women hold each other. Each of these three areas shows a different emotion -- the tense faces on the Horatii, the agony of the father and the grief of the women. Calvet (39) explains that David followed the composition of the fresco, with the central figures placed in the foreground to the right, the wall of a temple with figures standing and sitting among the columns in the middle ground, and in background a classical columned facade. Red is the color that is used throughout to contrast with the dark areas. The other colors are muted browns and cremes (Eitner 23). It emphasizes the blood and hot emotions on the one hand, but the sorrow on the other.

References

Calvet, Arlette. Unpublished Studies for "The Oath of the Horatii" by Jacques-Louis David. Master Drawings, (1968) 6.1: 37-42, 81-90.

Chilvers, Ian. Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Eitner, Lorenz. An Outline of 19th Century European Painting: From David through Cezanne. New York: Westview Press, 1992.

Hatcher, Evelyn Payne. Art as Culture: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Art.: Westport, CT.: Bergin & Garvey, 1999.

Selz, Jean. Modern Sculpture:…