Jacques-Louis David: Le Serment de Horaces (The Oath of hte Horatii)

Analysis from Jean Starobinski (1789: The Emblems of Reason):

"In his Oath of the Horatii (1784-1785), Jacques-Louis David gave the subjects its most powerful expression, and one that best reveals the aesthetic climate of the time. The scene is Rome, in the early days of the Republic. The three Horatii swear, in the presence of their father, to defend the fatherland, the Patrie. This time the central point of the painting is the left hand of Horatio, lifting up the three swords that symbolically unite three wills. The father looks at the hilts of the swords, and it is toward the same point that the sons stretch out their arms; the eyes of the sons meet those of the father on the three separate yet united hilts, so that the focal point of the brothers' communion is the fasces, of sheaf, of death-dealing weapons sanctified by the paternal hand that proffers them. ... The sacred element resides in soldierly duty. ... So here, at the beginnings of an age of conscription and national armies, we find the ancient legend of sacrifice for the fatherland being acted out in a symbolic setting. The father, looking not at his sons but at the arms he entrusts to them, holds victory dearer than the lives of his children. The sons, for their part, belong henceforward more to their oath than to themselves. The heroic impulse involves the leaving behind of tangible attachments and natural bonds for the sake of an idea, an idea of which the father's hand is but a touching metaphor. But the Oath of the Horatii had to show the strength of immediate emotions, if only to indicate the distance set between it and themselves by the warriors vowed to death or victory. The group of women on the right expresses the helpless force of grief. This completes with the dramatic demonstration in which firm masculinity, by which a man forgets himself in order to perform a mortal duty, is constrasted with sensitive feminity, which cannot face up to death and lets itself be overwhelmed by horror." (pp 105-110)

Montesquieu on David's The Oath of the Horatii:

David's painting is perfection. It is has a flawless balance of order, variety, symmetry, and contrast. The composition is feast for the eye. It is legible, devoid of unnecessary artifice, simple, and clear. The figures are grouped very carefully as to create a path that leads the eye through geometric forms and lines all pointing toward the focal point of the picture: the hilts of the swords. The eye moves from the three figures on the left, then follows the diagonal formed by their arms and is lead to the hilts of the swords, the focal point of the composition, and travels along the body of the father to finally rest on the group of women on the right.

There is a rich variety in the painting that is exalted by the order of the composition. There is variety in the colours but also in the lines, which create a contrast between the straight dynamic diagonals of the bodies of the men and of the swords, and the flowing and flexible curves of the women on the right.

The symmetry is an important element of David's painting and is used judiciously throughout the classical architecture whose pure and clean lines are a delight for the eye. There is also symmetry in the composition with the pyramidal shape formed by the stretched out arms of the four men.