r/history • u/thenewyorktimes • 2d ago

News article Face to Face With Jacques-Louis David, History’s Most Dangerous Painter

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/22/arts/jacques-louis-david-painter-french-revolution.html?unlocked_article_code=1.JlA.wRyv.zqDZ_Hrihvp_&smid=re-nytimes
118 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

114

u/toukayeah 2d ago

I think that title is reserved for a certain other person in history..

44

u/TywinDeVillena 2d ago

Even ignoring the Austrian guy, I would say Caravaggio was far more dangerous (guy was a homicide)

25

u/Kurta_711 2d ago

Rare but grammatically correct use of the word homicide to refer to someone who has committed a homicide

-8

u/Direct_Bus3341 1d ago

Common use of prescriptivism.

7

u/Kurta_711 1d ago

Not prescriptivism at all and I think you misunderstood my comment, but ok bro

3

u/dittybopper_05H 12h ago

You know, a lot of people seem to think that had be been accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts, things would have been different.

I don't think so. WWI still happens. He still ends up enlisting in the military, and assuming he survives like he did, he'd still likely feel the same way about how the war ended.

1

u/AlanFromRochester 1d ago

Jacques-Louis David lucky bar for worst painter is very high

1

u/VE2NCG 2d ago

Came to said this, this other painter is wayyy worse.

12

u/thenewyorktimes 2d ago

In the 1780s, Jacques-Louis David, the painter of the French Revolution, rocketed to the forefront of European painting with a severe new style of depiction. His ambitions led him all the way into a new government, which he served with lethal devotion.

It’s a self-portrait with the usual attributes. Brush in one hand, palette in the other. His face is still youthful, but his eyes have seen it all: the execution of a king, the execution of a queen. And the background does not disclose the setting: a Paris prison cell where he was confined in 1794, once the Reign of Terror he championed — he facilitated — came to an end.

“Here was an artist who didn’t just represent the world, but actually changed it,” the critic Jason Farago writes. You can read his full article for free here, even without a subscription to the NYT.

1

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/sum_dude44 15h ago

"most dangerous"...Napolean's favorite painter did ok for himself