一列出殡队伍正经过布鲁塞尔的鹅卵石街道
棺材里躺着的是
法国曾经最具影响力的画家的尸体
希拉克·路易斯·大卫
棺材后面跟着的是由艺术学生组成的送葬队伍
他们高举着一张张布告，上面列着大卫作品的名字
其中至少有一幅作品非常重要
这幅作品曾经被尘封了30年之久
没有人-除了画家本人-敢于把它公之于众
毫不奇怪，这应该是有史以来最蛊惑人心的作品
它令众人痴迷陶醉
它集美丽与丑恶与一身
同时这幅作品还有一个见不得人的秘密
这也是为什么大卫的尸体不能安葬在法国的原因
那么，这幅作品究竟画的是什么呢
以至于在成就其伟大的同时又犯下了不可饶恕的罪恶？
艺术的力量：大卫
纪录片之家 www.jlpzj.com 翻译：司国风 校对：xyxzy
1783年9月19日
一个由平纹皱丝织品做成的气球摇摇晃晃的
向凡尔赛宫上的天空升去
吊篮里有羊鸭公鸡各一只
当一阵强风掠过气球上空时
这些来自谷仓院子里的航天员们显得有些慌乱
最终气球还是平安着陆了，乘客们安然无恙
可这种举动已经违规了
凡尔赛宫自建立以来就禁止参观
所以其中的秘密也就不为外人所知
在地面上，从某种程度上说仍然是一派贵族统治的景象
但是在空中充斥的则是民主的气息
在巴黎则是一种彻骨的寒冷
博马舍（Beaumarchais）的作品 “费加罗的婚礼”在经过严审以后得以公映
国王认为该剧俗不可耐，这同时也预示了观众肯定不会少
不，先生
就因为自己是一位伟大的国王，你就以为自己也是个天才了吗？
出身名门，地位显赫
大权在握，金银满屋，这些东西令男人们感到骄傲无比
可你凭什么就该拥有这些？！
要不是投了个好胎
你丫儿也是平头百姓一个
没有任何迹象表明那些贵族们动动嘴就能毁灭这些勇敢者
即使他们开始认识到这种言语攻击的重要性
还是来谈谈签署你自己的死亡执行命令吧
但是后来不到10年的光景，他们（贵族）就知道了实情的严重性
他们遭受的苦难远非那些言语攻击可比
市民们，你们看看吧
荣光就在前头等着我们呢
全国人民都在等着呢
如果没有这出舞台剧的话
也许法国大革命永远也不会发生
诸如丹东这样伟大的演说家们就是演员， 他们不知羞耻的在戏院卖力的演出着
喝彩声与嘘声搅在一起
真理可是站在我们一方的
所以世人都不会（对我们的举动）感到惊讶
如果他们这些人真是要去创造一个新的法国的话
他们就需要有人来创作一些宣传画
这人就是希拉克·路易斯·大卫
是大卫让人们认识到了一个真正的市民该是什么样子
与画廊陈列的作品素材不同，他的作品展示的是关于生命
或者死亡
从这幅画上，除了感觉到深深的冲突之外 我不能确定还有其它什么东西
是的，这是一种带有悲剧性质的美丽
但是这种说法会把它与创作时令人惊骇的场景割裂开来
这是马拉，他是法国革命狂热支持者中最具偏执性格的一个
他在浴室中被人刺杀
马拉经常和恐怖与杀戮联系在一起
但是对于大卫来说，马拉不是个怪物，而是个圣人
这幅画把马拉塑造成了一个德行的典范
惊险吧，肯定会的
但是也带有少许的疯狂
这并不是说大卫是个有点坏心肠的狂想者
他终其一生都在寻找着德行的真谛
有些事情在他内心留下了痛苦的烙印，他变成了一个不屈不挠沉默寡言的人
1，2，3
一点也不奇怪，真的，在他七岁的时候
他那做钢铁生意的父亲在决斗中被手枪击毙了
所以，与铁有关的东西就深深的植入了他的内心深处
友善的伯父照料着他
伯父希望他将来能成为律师或者建筑师，但是大卫眼中只有绘画
所以伯父把他送到了大卫母亲的表亲那里
而那个人刚好就是法国最有名的画家
弗朗克斯·布歇(Francois Boucher) 非常了解艺术是如何为贵族服务的
粉嘟嘟的迷人眼睛就像想象中的糖果一样诱人
这些玫瑰色的游荡者在云端嬉闹
但是，布歇从老成的小大卫身上看到的却是一个
拥有令人感伤的美丽却不适合在艺术道路上探索的人
所以他把大卫送到了另一位大师门下
但是布歇又叮嘱大卫说：“要记得常常来看望我啊”
“我要把自己的热情传授给你”
但是身处这个愉快的行业，他常常不回家，他是个孤独的人
他曾经参加了一场决斗，面颊上受了剑伤
伤口渐渐长成了一个良性肿瘤，人们首先看到的就是这个东西
他的敌人这样称呼他“肿面颊的大卫”
这种情形常常发生，不管是巴黎的大街小巷还是酒吧沙龙
你会发现许许多多的残废和面目损伤者
可怕的天花留下的疤痕，先天足畸形，兔唇等等
但是这些情况中有些无关紧要， 有些却至关重要，大卫的肿面颊就很重要
这使得大卫不能正常的交谈
很少有人能听清楚他在说些什么，所以他的话也就慢慢的少起来了
当必须要说些什么的时候，他痛苦的意识到自己就像是个结巴
如果历史上曾经有个机智诙谐与开玩笑真的那么要紧的时期的话
那就是18世纪的法国
但是“肿面颊大卫”不能正常说话，他只能咕哝
不过对于大卫来说，或许还有一个安慰
因为有个因为其缺陷而著名的人
而这个人恰巧就是国王
路易十六生来就担心得不到幸福
他的祖父路易十五设计建造了凡尔赛宫
但是对于他这个年轻的继任者，幸福却成了一件困难的事情
当路易十六于1775年登基时，他想要的是最好的东西
但是他只是不知道如何去得到
对于路易十六来说
最悲哀的莫过于那个老去的国王是旧时代的反动典型
他老是认为自己非常现代，特别钟情于科学技术
气球？当然是越多越好了
他那有着灾难结局的统治有一个光明乐观的开始
而且其个人爱好也颇不一样
他走出辉煌的宫殿，带进来的是谦逊的作风，成了自然的信徒
甚至路易十六的奥地利皇后 玛丽·安托瓦内特也成了一个（自然的）信徒
她在凡尔赛宫建造了一个小农场，并到皇家牛奶场去挤奶
所以，沙发床和情妇就少了
代之以的是柔和与朴素
眼泪很好的表现了人物的内心感受
类似的作品得以流传下来
由让-巴普蒂斯特·格莱兹创作的“为死去的金色雀哭泣的女孩”
人们看着这幅画的时候也会哭泣
这种感觉对于大卫来说亦具意义
但与时尚精英们的那种浅陋的感觉不同
不，大卫找寻的是某些更加坚毅的元素
他在罗马的这些石头中找到了
对于大卫来说，在这里一切都改变了，不仅仅是他的艺术观
还有他对于自己祖国未来的想法
那么这些石头究竟告诉了他什么呢？
他们说：“这就是颓废帝王们的下场”
“曾经有一个自由的罗马，一个共和政体”
它简单朴素，精力充沛，英雄无数
但是阴柔的女性奢华却终结了它的生命
自由向专制低下了头，于是罗马人都成了奴隶
这条来自历史的讯息是如何与大卫的心灵产生共鸣的呢？
在1785年，大卫把这条信息传达了出来
对于那些自满的掌权者来说这可是坏消息
欢迎来到在卢浮宫举办的
世界上第一个公共艺术展
这里并不老是个安静的博物馆
在巴黎，这里每两年都会举办一场免费的盛大娱乐活动
传言说将会展出一幅激动人心的作品
大卫的“何拉提之誓”
这是一幅与处于危机中的国家有关的作品
为了避免战争，罗马挑选出三名勇士
与三位敌手对决，生者即胜者
残酷的现实却是其中一名罗马勇士的妻子是敌方的一员
要么成为寡妇，要么成为孤儿
但是勇士们却丝毫没有考虑到这些
这是一幅关于道义的作品， 展示的是强壮的肌肉，怒张的血管，还有钢铁般的意志
唯一飘扬的色彩是披肩的血红色
父亲庄严的宣誓他们要么征服敌人要么死亡
他的手掌握着锋利的刀锋
至少有六万人将会赶来参观这幅作品
里面不但有要人，还有小店主，泼妇
整个底层社会的人们都来了
他们将成为大卫的子民
看着由线条构成的死亡在舞动
人们却不知道是否应该感到恐惧
这种感觉就像在危机来临之前的动员号召
而这场危机并非发生在古罗马
而是此时此地路易十六的法国
向先前的其它革命一样，金融体系率先崩溃了
法国曾经以帮助美国获得独立而感到骄傲
但是这让它付出了巨大的代价
避免金融体系的破产就意味着要征收更多的税
所以老的笨问题又来了
为什么贵族和神职人员就可以免税
而穷苦的普通大众就得掏空腰包
难道我们真是共同生活在一个国家里吗？
说到国家，一个新概念出现了
既然我们同处一个国家， 为什么不选举代表（来替我们行使权利）呢?
噢，这并不是说新法国仍然还是君主政体
皇后得需要大量的钻石来装饰宫殿
但是我们的国王却还不错
我们没有理由要发动一场社会大动乱
然而大卫却以为那并不意味着一场小改革就不能起作用
尸位素餐的家伙实在是太多了
首先在绘画学院里的这些家伙得滚蛋
当大卫穷困潦倒时，这些人给他吃了四次闭门羹
如今他成功了，这些人简直不能容忍他
好吧，这些人已经完了，不管怎样，他们已经没有用处了
他如今的追随者不但聪明，而且思想自由
这里就是其中两个，他们富有、聪慧而且待人和蔼
察明夫妇，安东尼和玛丽·安妮·拉沃歇尔
他是一个著名的试验化学家
地上的长颈瓶是用来测量气体的
玛丽·安妮在13岁的时候就嫁给了他， 她的角色已经不仅仅是妻子这么简单了
不经意搭在肩头的素手告诉我们她是一个真正的伴侣
她为丈夫翻译英文文献，还为他的著作创作插图
他的钱财虽然来得很辛苦，但是他却有社会道德心
他捐献了许多钱用在排干沼泽地
这是为了根除疟疾，类似的事情他做了很多
看着这幅肖像
你会认为在大卫眼中，这正是应该管治法国的那种人
仁慈，和蔼可亲，具有现代思想
为了7000里弗，他可没有想着要为另一位化学家拉瓦锡画像
那位化学家可是靠一支私人军队来为他征税敛财的
不，大卫接受了他的酬金，但是就要在卢浮宫展示作品时
他选择了放弃，但是当时他一定会那么做的，不是吗？
因为在完成创作与展出开始之间这段时期，法国发生了剧变
在1789年
希望与绝望并存
希望源自于一个代表大会
三级会议在全国遍地举行
但是同样也有绝望，因为时机太差
粮食歉收，粮价飞涨
把希望与绝望放在一起，你会得到什么呢？
在政治游戏中这如同一个炸药包
当三级会议于1789年春季在凡尔赛宫举行的时候
当到了最后的时候，所有的问题归结成了一个： 代表们或是还按老规矩办事
会议还分成三个等级进行
即贵族、僧侣和平民，抑或采用新的方式
大家不分等级以一个整体来参加会议？
在平民代表中有一个年轻的律师，名叫罗伯斯庇尔
他强调了这一论点
他宣布他们才是唯一的合法团体
并欢迎贵族和僧侣加入
众多贵族和僧侣也竟然同意了
当时是1789年6月20日
这就像一场晚春的倾盆大雨
于是600名第三等级平民代表
加上新加入进来的僧侣贵族成员
被锁在了会议厅外面
其中有叫吉若丹的医生，他知道附近有个网球场
巴黎市长 让-西尔凡·巴伊突然就成了演出的主角
我们向上帝宣誓，祖国永远也不会分裂
直到我们达成一部合理公正的宪法
第一次，贵族僧侣和资产阶级
在没有国王的允许下在一起召开了会议
大家伸开手臂，相互拥抱，生命与艺术站在了一起
大卫在罗马的醍醐灌顶成就了一个新的法国
一年后，大卫开始创作“网球场之誓”
画中一派喧闹景象，仿佛能听到大家吼出的誓言
仿佛是一场雷电交加的风暴
这场革命就像一种无法阻挡的自然力量
其中心的空间是如此巨大
却又不是空荡荡的
里面充满了闪电轰鸣狂风呼啸，那是自由的狂暴能量在活动
这是一种信念
它是如此巨大，引发了它的人类在它面前显得如此渺小
这幅画的本来是要创作成为一幅大型绘画
这只是其中一小部分，但是你也看到了，它到最后也没有完成
在大卫能为这些裸体模特穿上衣服之前
他们其中许多人就被杀死或者羞辱了
传递统一与自由的讯息很快就过时了
大家不再相互拥抱，代之以的是相互指指点点
1789年的春天本应为重生的法国带来一个光明的前景
看起来路易十六最终还是接受了“网球场之誓”的结果
即法国如今有一个国民大会这个事实
但是在巴黎皇宫
却没有人真正相信他
人们说国王在巴士底狱秘密的安置了炸药
所以巴黎就等着导火线被点燃了
7月14日早晨，大约900名群众汇集到了巴士底
经常都一样，不是吗？有人慌了神开了枪， 但是没有人知道是哪一方先开火的
大家喊着“杀啊”
然后是一通猛烈的交火
混乱持续了一下午，83人丢了性命，最终政府交出了巴士底狱，
他被保证会得到安全通行证
但是他得到的却是头被刀子割了下来
但是，是谁说革命是不会流血的呢？
这里是大卫为斩首行动做出的贡献
这是他所做过的最黑暗的事情了
这次的主角又是一个罗马父亲
布鲁斯(罗马政治家,暗杀恺撒者之一)，他正在黑暗中沉思
他曾经为了恢复君主政体，亲手处决了自己的儿子
当儿子们的无头尸体带回来时，他甚至看都不看一眼
只有他的那只右脚泄漏出了他的些许内心感受
布鲁斯已经走进了阴影中
光线照向孩子们的母亲，她直勾勾的盯着孩子们的尸体
你能感受到她内心的苦痛挣扎
就像大卫其它伟大作品一样，在这幅画中有种彻骨的寒冷
即便你会禁不住去赞叹它的伟大， 但是作品的内涵却能让你的血液冰冻
让我们看着画面的中心区域
一把锋利的剪刀，这把坚硬冰冷的金属把家庭的纽带剪断了
大卫好像和刀锋颇有缘分
它们曾经弄伤了他的脸庞，如今自己的心灵也留下了伤疤
从父亲到祖国的距离是如此之近
在革命最初的两年里，大家很快从兴奋转入了偏执状态
大家放肆的纵酒狂欢，因为私人恩怨寻机报复
大家为什么如此的狂躁？因为大家仍然还很饿
面包的价格高得出奇
而大家发现饿了又不能把选票当饭吃
必须得有人为此负责
带着嘲弄神情的市场上的女人称呼他们为“烤面包的夫妻”
于是路易斯和玛丽·安东尼蒂 从安逸的凡尔赛宫中拖出来拉到了巴黎
他们说，皇后跟一个奥地利娼妓差不多
大卫也是这么认为的
他这样写道：“大伙儿应该把她掐死，然后碎尸万段”
此时的他正处于一个武断与半信半疑的混乱状态
和其他同胞一样，他也认为皇后是一个祸水
但是认为路易斯是个国王的念头在他脑海中又挥之不去
他甚至签了约去为他绘制肖像
所以，从政治角度上说他还是不够老练
直到他遇见了让-保罗·马拉
他是一个热气球驾驶者， 失败的发明家，报纸编辑，性格狂热盲目
他正呆在浴缸里
他生有皮肤病，身上满是鳞屑红斑，非常难受
只有在这里他的病痛才能得到缓解
他兴奋起来有些竭斯底里，就像敲击中的一架鼓
在他的文章“人民的朋友”中对那些虚伪的爱国者
他都无情的加以揭露、谴责和诅咒，并称之为叛国者
他叫道：“阴谋无处不在”
充斥着恐惧的大街小巷完全相信了这个阴谋论
玛丽·安东尼蒂是一条坏心肠的母狗
和她的弟弟奥地利国王阴谋对付法国
瞎想的吧
只不过它是真的
1791年6月，两夫妇出逃未遂被抓回巴黎
成了名副其实的囚犯
看来即便是奥地利会侵略法国， 其后果也不会发生在国王夫妇身上了
如今国王夫妇倒是希望敌人能打进来
次年战争爆发
国王夫妇的的时日已经屈指可数了，法国的君主政体亦然
现在为法国而战就意味着为反对皇权而战
开战后过了五天，那是1792年4月
在临近前线的军事重镇斯特拉斯堡举行了一场晚宴
议题是如何重振军队的士气
所以那里有烤面包，也有演讲
还是老一套，“自由万岁”“暴君必死”
唯一缺少的是一首
能给军队带来自信的歌曲
这时候 鲁热·德·利尔（《马赛曲》作曲者） 是团里一名工兵军官，也是个业余作曲家
就是他创作了这首歌
你的事业无上荣光
你在为祖国而战
大家都已经动员起来
每个人都渴望战斗，去战胜敌人
我们必须大胆大胆再大胆，法国就会得到拯救
在1792年8月，皇家卫队被屠杀了
路易斯、玛丽·安东尼蒂和他们的孩子都被投入了监狱
对暴君永远也不能妥协，必须得当头一棒才能奏效
我支持执行死刑
你也只不过是个凡人罢了
1793年1月23日路易十六被处决了
在新组成的国民大会
支持判决国王死刑的人中
只有一个艺术家曾经从国王那里领取过酬金
那就是雅克-路易·大卫
因为新诞生的法国是个共和国
大卫如今也是个模范市民
作为一名巴黎下院议员
他也可以与自己的政治偶像马拉 以及罗伯斯庇尔共同参加国民大会了
再也没有回头路可走了
从此以后，大卫和他的艺术就属于大革命了
大革命指向哪里，他就会打向哪里
而革命的方向却是专政
战争中的法国可谓是内忧外患
优柔寡断妇人之仁是不可取的
在大革命中人们都相互认为是朋友而非敌人
但是如今许多人却被无端指责
首先遭到逮捕的是他的老朋友和赞助人
安东尼和玛丽-安妮·拉沃歇尔
玛丽-安妮·拉沃歇尔最终得以幸免遇难
但是她的丈夫却没有
对于马拉和罗伯斯庇尔来说,人杀的再多他们也不会感到安全
在1789年,马拉的要求是杀几百人
如今则是几万人
必须得有人制止他,那个人就是夏绿蒂·科黛
她只有25岁,来自诺曼底地区的卡昂镇
她并非保皇派,事实上她是个革命主义者
但是对于马拉及其追随者来说,她却是个敌人
科黛认为专政就是对自由共和的一种嘲弄
她义无反顾的成为了一名悲剧女英雄,目的是为了拯救她的祖国
1793年7月9日,她坐上了一辆驶往巴黎的马车
当她到达后,她来到了这里准备进入皇宫
她戴了一顶装饰有绿色羽毛的黑色帽子, 随身揣了一把六英寸长的匕首
在一家便宜的旅馆房间里,她写下了一封信
在信中她解释了要刺杀马拉的原因
然后把这封信和她受洗礼的证明一起缝进了衣服里
在科黛进行着刺杀计划时
大卫去拜访了马拉
他发现在浴缸里的马拉支撑着身体
把一个木盒翻过来作为临时用的小桌
就这么点儿时间,他也不忘去谴责那些叛国者
难道他就从来没有停下来休息一下吗?
次日,夏洛特·科黛来到位于方济会修士街马拉的寓所
因为无法进去，她试图传递一个便条警告马拉有阴谋要发生
希望他会上当，但是没有奏效
当晚，她又试作了一次尝试
当她到达时，刚好有两个人来送面包和报纸
她趁机溜了进去
科黛假装是个告密者，她拿出一份叛国者的名单
他说：“用不了一周我就把他们都送上断头台”
然后事情就发生了
科黛抽出匕首，刺入了马拉的胸膛
这位“人民的朋友”已经离革命而去了
不管是真的还是假的
国民大会里的代表们是嚎啕大哭
我认为他们现在最迫切的愿望是马拉能再次回到他们身边
“快回来吧，回来吧，我们需要您，法国需要您”
然后有一位最富戏剧性的代表蹦出来吼道
“大卫，你在哪里？这里有个活儿要你做”
此时肿脸颊的大卫奇迹般的不再口吃了
我来干
他说道：“交给我吧”
“我将为马拉创作一幅作品”
当时正值仲夏，热得不得了
在大卫的指导下，尸体防腐者们日夜赶工
给马拉的尸体涂上防腐剂准备参加葬礼
但是本应是苍白的死人肤色却变成了绿色
大卫曾经想让马拉正襟危坐， 一副为了人民的利益辛勤劳作的样子
但是腐烂的尸体却不能配合
尸体涂满了香料，只能平放着供大众参观以缅怀过去
但是葬礼之后随着时间流逝，马拉必将淡出人们的记忆
但是绘画就可以弥补这个缺陷
对马拉来说，这应该是最好的复仇方式
因为这可以让人们认为马拉就在他们周围
这是一个被仁慈诚实和无私的爱国心美化的形象
大卫说：“看着他，你就会看到那种最高形式的人性”
当然，他把马拉的尸体清洗干净了
他的肤色是一种类似石头的冷色
伤口也不能忽略，同时也得处理的十分精巧
就像是圣十字架上基督受难的伤口
白色布单就像是基督的裹尸布
它幽灵般的裹着马拉，
这是一幅用于礼拜祭祀的作品
它是为了让你相信某些东西
其精妙之处在于事实上它是在告诉人们一个故事
曾经以来，这位英雄并非罗马人，但他确实他们其中一员
对于高唱马赛曲的人们来说
这是第一幅称得上伟大的作品
我们几乎能感受得到大卫当时的想象内容
那就像是一个把面对这幅画的人群 视为自己的孩子的父亲在诉说着：“看吧，这里就是我的墨水池”
“还有阴险的科黛带来的那封信，上面沾满了伟人马拉的鲜血”
但是大卫却没有展示科黛带来的那个名单
上面列着叛国者的名字
因为这封信意义不同
它会使马拉看起来像是自己仁慈的牺牲品
这封信仿佛在说： “能够得到您的仁慈对于我来说太不幸了，这已经足够了”
在盒子上还有另一封信，那是一个前线牺牲战士的妻子写给他的
旁边是一份马拉准备送给她的物品
两个女人：一个是善良的母亲，一个是坏女人科黛
作品并没有展示马拉寓所面貌的意思
没有十字交叉挂在墙上的手枪，也没有仿造的柱子
在画面整个上部代之以的是模糊松散的一笔
那可以是墙壁或者仅仅是模模糊糊的空间
那代表的是永恒
但是那个盒子，带着木质条纹，显得很坚硬
盒子仿佛在说：“他是你们中的一员，他也很贫穷，也受过苦难”
“但是你们却不能达到他这样的高度”
“没有人可以，除非通过这幅画”
但是当你看得入神的时候
你内心会发出另一个声音：“别着急”
“这是一种最纯洁的魔力”
大卫的目的是去美化一个偏执狂
这个偏执狂的最大满足就是去迫害那些
对政治冷淡的人
这无疑是恐怖的帮凶
当然，这永远不会发生在背叛了艺术的大卫身上
他也许会说：“噢，不！我是在践行艺术最高尚的目标”
“即道德的再教育”
“这与教堂里悬挂的那些祭坛装饰没有什么两样”
“但是那些东西都是谎言和童话”
“我们现在有了一座新的‘教堂’，那是关于革命的美德的”
那么我为什么会喜欢大卫呢？
其实我并不喜欢他，他是个怪物
但是他能让信念的烈焰在冰中燃起
他是一个梦幻宣传员，再也没有人比得上他了
阿尔贝特·斯皮尔(曾任希特勒的私人建筑师及军备部长) 却没有大卫这样的好运气了
但是关键之处是什么呢？
其实，这是对机智、闲谈和善意的玩笑的报复
而且还不仅仅如此
这是一种让那些观看这幅作品的人成为有道德的良好市民的技巧
而且它是如此的完美，如此的富有悲剧色彩又富有诗意， 以至于你几乎真的要相信了
但是如同许多增进人性仁慈的艺术技巧一样
它也有反作用
因为它是一个谎言
在马拉遇刺后过了三个月
1793年10月，玛丽·安东尼蒂被送上了断头台
大卫看着押运她的囚车经过街道
人们摩拳擦掌
都使劲儿想往这个曾经的皇后身上吐唾沫
对于这位皇后，大卫无动于衷
但是在玛丽·安东尼蒂的命运中得到了更为重要的东西
他如今已是大革命宣传部主任
他全身心投入了工作，其它事情一概不管
当妻子对他这种热情表示不赞成时，他便与妻子离了婚
如今大卫已经成了一个执行者，他坐在安全委员会办公室里
他对那些革命立场不坚定者穷追不舍直至抓获， 然后便签署他们的死刑授权书
恐怖蔓延开来
大卫也成了杀人机器的一部分
而且随着杀戮愈发不可收拾
大卫忙于筹划场面更为壮观的公众展示来教育民众
数千人一起高唱颂歌，在巴士底狱竖立雕像
一个“上帝”的庆祝日
主角是大革命的大祭司罗伯斯庇尔
最终，大卫为自己的成功付出了代价
那个发动战争的精明人深谙枪炮和面包的才是主角
圣女和鸽子则不值一提
所以大卫并不仅仅是个娱乐而是个威胁（有些喧宾夺主）， 所以必须得除掉
而且大卫的垮台与罗伯斯庇尔的命运也有着千丝万缕的联系
渐渐的，人们不再认为罗伯斯庇尔是革命的救世主
而是个暴君
而大卫则是这个暴君的粉饰者，所以不可避免的要随着暴君灭亡
罗伯斯庇尔在国民大会上受到攻讦， 有人喊出了那个可怕的字眼：无法无天的
大卫此时对大家表明了
他叫道：“哥们儿别怕”
“如果你喝毒药，我就和你一起喝”
但是他当然没有这样做
次日，大卫突然身体不适，所以错过了殉难的机会
当罗伯斯庇尔被送上断头台时，大卫并没有在他身边
铡刀落处，人头落地
但是他们并没有放过大卫
他被判定为艺术的暴君，大卫尝试为自己辩护
没有人搞清楚他在说什么，但是人们都注意到了他脸色的苍白
冷汗浸透衣衫，滴到了地板上
在监狱里他设法搞到了一些颜料，为自己画了一幅肖像
你能看到那个著名的肿块，以及他那扭曲的脸庞
但是真相远远没有结束
因为我们看到的肯定不是那个宣传大师
而是那个意气风发的年轻大卫
一脸天真，头发飘扬
敞开的外套，展示的是他那颗透明纯净的心
他正在拨弄着调色板和画笔
他仿佛在说：“为什么是我呢？”
“我只不过是区区一个画家”
是的，没错儿
入了歧途，是吧？难道只是尽了些本分？
我不这么认为
但是猜猜会发生什么事情呢？这种恳求手段奏效了
大卫被释放了
然后他花了一整年时间去创作了这幅无可争议的肖像作品
这就是他的妹夫赛里齐阿特夫先生（Seriziat）
这就是英勇的大革命现在的模样
共和国的三色旗变成了一个时尚装饰品
而且当他创作历史题材的作品时，都是在恳求制止暴力杀戮
大卫作品的政治意味渐渐淡去，对吗？
绝错！
那个内心深处的恶魔从来就没有离开
一旦被权力所侵噬，你就会终生期待着被侵噬
既然能粉饰马拉，为什么就不能去粉饰拿破仑呢？
当拿破仑于1805年被加冕时
大卫马上就投靠了他
但是当拿破仑被击败后，君主政体又恢复了
众多拿破仑支持者都被赦免了
除了大卫
因为他做了一些不可宽恕的事情
就是这个
这是关于一个恐怖制造者的一幅声名狼藉的作品，
法国已经受够了雅克-路易·大卫
他被驱逐出境，最终客死布鲁塞尔
在那里他龙困浅水
以画些风景画和肖像为生
在法国，人们则把他当作一个老古董来谈论
“噢，大卫，就是那个“布鲁斯”是吧，他死了没有啊？”
1825,当他真的于1825年12月去世时
法国政府禁止他的家人把尸体运回国内安葬
弑君犯上者是不会受到宽恕的
如今尽管大卫的作品公开出售
此前这些作品也都得以公开展览， 但是唯独“马拉之死”这幅作品没有
它被保存在大卫儿子的家里
并由私家卫队看守
如果你能看上一眼，你就会明白个中缘由了
如果真有幅作品能够体现出那种致死的美丽的话
那无疑就是大卫的这幅作品：马拉之死
A funeral cortege clatters its way through the cobbled streets of Brussels.
Inside the carriage is the body
of the most powerful French painter there had ever been.
Jacques-Louis David.
Following the carriage is a solemn procession of art students,
holding up placards with the names of his paintings.
All but one, which happened to be the greatest of them all.
It was a picture which hadn't seen the light of day for 30 years.
No one, least of all the man who painted it, dared show it.
No wonder. It was the most spellbinding thing he had ever made.
A painting before which people had once swooned.
A painting both beautiful and repulsive.
But the picture was also a guilty secret,
the real reason why David's body was refused burial in France.
So, what was it about this painting
which made it both his unforgettable masterpiece and his unforgivable crime?
On the 19th September, 1783,
an enormous taffeta spheroid wobbled its way unsteadily
above the palace of Versailles.
In the basket were a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
When a violent gust of wind made a tear near the top of the balloon,
there were fears for the barnyard aeronauts.
In the end, though, the balloon survived and it was judged the animals had not suffered.
This was, though, a major breach of protocol.
Versailles had been built to control spectacle.
That way, the mystery of absolutism was preserved.
On the ground, it was still, to some extent, an aristocratic vision.
In the air, it'd become democratic.
In Paris, a more down-to-earth thrill.
Beaumarchais'play, The Marriage of Figaro, is about to open after several government bans.
The king had called it detestable. That guaranteed a crowd.
No, monsieur.
Because you are a great lord, you think you're a great genius?
Nobility, rank,
position, fortune, how proud they make a man feel.
What have you done to deserve such advantages?
Put yourself to the trouble of being born, nothing more. For the rest...
...you're a very ordinary man.
There were no signs that the bravos died on the lips of the nobility,
even as they began to realise the significance of the attack.
Talk about signing your own death warrant.
But then, how were they to know that, in under 10 years,
they'd be on the receiving end of something far more wounding than words.
Look, citizens,
at the glorious destiny that awaits us.
You have a whole nation to mobilise.
No more...
Still, the French Revolution could never have happened
without this sense of theatre.
Its great orators, like Danton, were performers, shamelessly playing to the gallery,
milking the cheers and the hisses.
Reason fights on your side,
and you have not even begun to astonish the world.
And if they were really going to create a new France,
they needed someone to create images to go with the words.
That someone was Jacques-Louis David.
It was David who would give people the vision of what a true citizen was.
His art, then, wasn't meant as gallery fodder. It was an entire way of life.
Or death.
I'm not sure how I feel about this painting, except deeply conflicted.
Yes, it's tragically beautiful.
But to say that is to separate it from the appalling moment of its creation.
This is Jean-Paul Marat, the most paranoid of the Revolution's fanatics.
He's been assassinated in his bath.
Marat was someone for whom there could never be enough terror, never enough killing.
But for David, Marat isn't a monster. He's a saint.
This painting transforms Marat into a paragon of virtue.
Breathtaking? For sure.
But maybe also just a little mad.
Which isn't to say that Jacques-Louis David was some sort of malevolent crackpot.
All his life, he was really only looking for virtue.
There was something painfully earnest about him, resolute, self-contained.
One, two, three.
Not surprising, really. When he was seven,
his father, an iron merchant, had been killed in a pistol duel.
Something iron must have entered the boy's soul.
He was looked after by friendly uncles
who wanted him to be a lawyer or an architect, but David would hear of nothing but painting.
So the uncles sent him on to his mother's cousin,
who just happened to be the most successful painter in France.
Francois Boucher knew exactly what art was supposed to deliver for the nobility.
The pinkest, flossiest eye candy imaginable,
rosy bums romping on frothy pillows.
But perhaps Boucher saw in the sober, young David
someone for whom melting beauty was not going to be the point of art.
So he sent him on to another master.
But Boucher said to David, ''Come and see me from time to time,
and I will teach you my warmth.''
But David would never be at home in the pleasure industry. He was a loner.
Once he got involved in a swordfight, and took a vicious slash on his cheek.
The wound grew into a benign tumour. That was the first thing anyone noticed about him.
His enemies would call him, ''David with the swollen cheek. ''
Accidents like this happened every day. Walk down any Paris street or into any salon,
and you would have seen a rich gallery of the deformed and the disfigured.
Terrible smallpox scars, club feet, harelips, the lot.
But some accidents matter to people and some don't. This one did.
David's disfigurement meant he couldn't talk properly.
Few people could understand what he was saying, so he ended up not saying very much.
When he did talk, he was painfully conscious of being a stammerer.
If there was ever a moment in history when wit and banter really mattered,
it was surely in 18th-century France.
But David of the swollen cheek couldn't talk, he couldn't chat, he just mumbled.
Maybe there was one consolation,
for there was someone else who was famous for his handicaps in the wit department,
and he happened to be the king.
Louis XVI was born to worry about happiness.
His grandfather, Louis XV, had designed Versailles around its pursuit.
But for his young successor, happiness would always be hard work.
When Louis came to the throne in 1775, he wanted the best for everyone,
but he just didn't know how to get it.
The saddest thing about Louis XVI
was that the king who went down in history as the reactionary symbol of the old regime
actually thought of himself as thoroughly modern, deeply into science and technology.
Balloons? Couldn't get enough of them.
His reign, which ended in catastrophe, began in a sunburst of giddy optimism,
and a change in taste, too.
Out went gold ormolu, in came modesty, the cult of nature.
Even Louis XVI's young Austrian queen, Marie Antoinette, was a devotee.
She built a toy farm here at Versailles, went off milking cows in the royal dairy.
So, no more couches and courtesans.
Instead, tenderness, simplicity.
Tears were especially prized as evidence of feeling.
Paintings like this went down well.
Girl Weeping Over Dead Canary by Jean-Baptiste Greuze.
People wept when they saw it.
Feelings mattered to David, too,
but not the shallow kind embraced by the fashionable elite.
No, David was in search of something steelier.
It was amidst the stones of Rome that he found it.
Everything changed for David here. Not just what he thought about art,
but what he thought about the future of his country.
So what were the stones telling him?
''This is what happens to decadent empires, '' they said.
Once there had been a free Rome, the Republic,
austere,just, virile, packed with flinty heroes.
But effeminate luxury had killed it.
Liberty had surrendered to despotism and the Romans had become slaves.
How that message from history echoed in David's fertile brain.
And in 1785, David delivered that message,
like a package of bad news for the complacent and the over-powdered.
Welcome to the first public art show in the world,
in the palace of the Louvre, no less.
This wasn't always a hushed museum.
Every two years, it staged the greatest public entertainment in Paris, and it was free.
Word had got out there was something sensational to see.
Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii.
It's a painting about a country in crisis.
To avoid war, the Romans have chosen three of their men
to fight with three from the enemy. Last one standing wins.
The cruel twist is that one of the Roman boys is married to an enemy girl.
Widowhood and orphanhood beckon.
But none of the men are paying the slightest attention to that.
This is a boys' bonding picture, a tight-packed display of muscle, veins and steel.
The only splash of colour is the blood red of that cape.
The father solemnly swears them to conquer or die,
his naked hand on the sharp blade.
At least 60,000 people would have come to the exhibition to see this painting,
and not just the bigwigs either, but shopkeepers, fishwives,
the whole sweaty, growling public.
They would be David's people.
And they looked at that strange line dance of death,
and they didn't know whether to be thrilled or scared.
It felt like a call to arms in the face of a great crisis.
And that crisis was happening not in ancient Rome, but here and now,
in Louis XVI's France.
It began, as so many revolutions do, with a financial meltdown.
France had taken pride in helping America to win independence,
but it had come at a huge cost.
Avoiding bankruptcy meant more taxes.
So, awkward questions were being asked
about why the nobility and the clergy were tax-exempt,
while the scarecrow poor were supposed to empty their pockets.
Wasn't the nation all in it together?
The nation? Well, that was a new idea.
And while we're at it, how about elected representatives, too?
Oh, it went without saying that the new France would still be a monarchy.
The queen, with all those diamonds, needed putting in her place,
but the king was a good fellow.
No reason to assume a social apocalypse around the corner.
For a while, that's how David himself felt, which didn't mean a little reform wouldn't help.
There was a lot of deadwood around.
For a start, those non-entities at the Academy of Painting, they'd have to go.
When he was a struggling artist, they'd rejected him four times.
Now he was successful, they barely tolerated him.
Well, their time was up. Anyway, he didn't need them any more.
Now he had intelligent, liberal-minded followers.
Here are two of those good eggs, rich, smart and affable.
Mr and Mrs Charming, Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier.
He is a famous experimental chemist.
That flask on the floor is for measuring gases.
Marie-Anne, who'd married him at 13, was more than a wife.
That casual hand on his shoulder tells us she was a true partner,
translating articles from English for him, designing illustrations for his books.
He's filthy rich, but he does have a social conscience.
A lot of his money has been put into draining swamps
to eradicate malaria, that sort of thing.
To look at the portrait, you'd think David has captured a vision
of the kind of people who ought to be governing France,
humane, affectionate and modern.
Well, for 7,000 livres, he wasn't even going to hint at the other Lavoisier,
the one who made money collecting taxes with the help of a private army.
No, David took his fee, but when the time came for him to show the painting at the Louvre,
he ended up withdrawing it. But then he would, wouldn't he?
Between the paint drying and the show opening, everything in France had changed.
It was 1789.
Hope and desperation in equal parts.
Hope from a representative assembly,
the Estate's General elected from thousands of meetings all over France.
But desperation too, because it was happening at the worst possible time.
Harvest wipeouts, soaring prices.
Put hope and desperation together, and what do you get?
The political equivalent of nitroglycerine.
When the Estate's General met here in Versailles, in the spring of 1789,
it all boiled down to one question. Would the deputies do it the old way,
meeting as three separate orders,
nobles, clergy and commoners, or would they do it the new way,
and for the first time come together as a single national assembly?
The commoners, among them a young lawyer, Maximilien Robespierre,
forced the issue,
declaring themselves the only legitimate body,
priests and nobles welcome to join.
A surprising number of them did.
It's the 20th June, 1789,
and it's one of those late-spring torrential downpours.
And the 600 deputies of the Third Estate, the commoners,
plus their new allies among the nobles and the clergy,
have been locked out of their meeting hall.
A certain Doctor Guillotin knows a tennis court quite close by.
The mayor of Paris, Sylvain Bailly, is suddenly the star of the show.
Swear an oath to God and the fatherland never to separate,
until we have made a sound and just constitution.
For the first time, aristocrats, clergy and bourgeoisie were meeting together
without the king's permission.
Arms stretch, bodies embrace, life had caught up with art.
David's Rome reborn was the new France.
A year later, David got to work on his depiction of the Tennis Court Oath.
It's a picture filled with noise. The roar of the oath.
The crash of a great electrical storm.
The Revolution as an unstoppable force of nature.
And at the centre of it all, an enormous space.
Except it's not empty at all.
It's filled with light and rushing wind, the furious energy of liberty.
It's an idea.
An idea so big, it dwarfs the humans who enact it.
The drawing was supposed to be turned into a huge painting.
This is just a small section of it. But as you can see, it was never finished.
Before David even had a chance to put clothes on these nude models,
many of them would be dead or disgraced.
The great message of unity and freedom would soon be quaintly out of date.
Instead of arms outstretched, there was an epidemic of finger-pointing.
July 1789 ought to have been a moment of golden optimism for the reborn France.
Louis XVI seemed finally to have accepted the results of the Tennis Court Oath,
that there was now a National Assembly in France.
But here in the Palais Royale, the Speaker's Corner of Paris,
nobody actually believed him.
People said the king had secretly stocked the fortress of the Bastille with gunpowder,
so Paris was literally a powder keg waiting to happen.
On the morning of July 14th, a crowd of about 900 converged on the grim fortress.
It's always the same, isn't it? Someone panics, there's a first shot. No one knows from where.
Cries of ''Massacre!''
Then, a serious exchange of fire.
It took an afternoon of chaos and 83 lives before the governor yielded the Bastille.
He was promised safe conduct.
What he got was his head cut off with a fruit knife.
But then, whoever said revolutions were going to be bloodless?
Here's David's contribution to the decapitation campaign.
It's the darkest thing he ever did.
It's a Roman father again.
Brutus, brooding in the darkness,
has ordered the execution of his sons, for plotting to bring back the monarchy.
Their headless bodies are brought to him, and he literally doesn't look back.
Only that right foot is a sign of his repressed emotion.
Brutus has gone to the dark side.
Light floods the boys' mother, who sees only her headless children.
You feel the tug of the heart.
There's something chilling about this painting, like all David's great pictures.
Even as you marvel at its brilliance, your blood runs cold at what it's saying.
Look what's at the dead centre of the picture,
a pair of sharp scissors, the hard, cold metal that's cut the family ties.
David seems to have a thing about blades.
They've marked his face and now they've marked his mind.
From father to fatherland is but a short step.
The first two years of the Revolution swung wildly from mass euphoria to paranoia,
orgies of public hugging, spasms of vindictive lynching.
Why the anger? Because people were still hungry.
Bread prices had gone through the roof,
and people had discovered you couldn't eat votes.
Someone was to blame.
''The baker and the baker's wife', the jeering market women called them,
as they dragged Louis and Marie Antoinette out of the safety of Versailles, to Paris.
The queen, they said, was no better than an Austrian whore.
David thought the same.
''The rioters should have strangled her, cut the carcass to pieces, ''he wrote.
He was at this time an odd mix of dogma and uncertainty.
Like millions of his countrymen, he thought the queen was a monster,
but he hadn't given up on the idea of Louis as citizen king.
He even signed up to do a portrait of him.
So he was still very much a political ing閚ue,
until, that is, he met the likes of him.
Jean-Paul Marat, balloonist, failed inventor, newspaper editor, fanatic.
Here he is in his bath,
the only place he could get respite from the excruciatingly itchy skin disease
that left him raw and scaly.
Marat played on hysteria like a drum.
His paper, The Friend of the People, yelled and cursed and denounced,
ripping off the masks of false patriots whom he fingered as traitors.
''There are plots everywhere, ''he screamed.
The street, caught between fear and hyperventilation, ate up the conspiracy theories.
Marie Antoinette, malevolent slut,
plotting with her brother, the Emperor of Austria, against France.
Imagine.
Except it was true.
In June, 1791 , the royal couple was caught in their escape bid
and taken back, virtual prisoners, to Paris.
Austria threatened France with dire consequences should anything happen to the king and queen.
Now, the royal couple seem like the enemy within.
The following year, war broke out,
and their days, and the days of the French monarchy, were numbered.
Now, fighting for France meant fighting against royalty.
Five days after the war started, in April, 1792,
there was a dinner in the garrison town of Strasbourg, near the front.
The idea was to boost the shaky morale of the army.
So, there were toasts, there were speeches.
''Long live liberty'', ''Death to tyrants'', the usual thing.
What was missing, though, was a good song
that would send a surge of self-belief right through the camp.
It was Rouget de Lisle, regimental engineer and part-time composer,
who came up with that song.
You belong to something glorious now.
You belong to the Patrie, the fatherland.
MAN: Everything is in motion.
Everyone burns to fight. To conquer our enemies,
we must have daring, more daring, always daring. And France will be saved!
In August, 1792, the guards protecting the royal family were slaughtered,
Louis, Marie Antoinette and their children were taken to prison.
One must never compromise with tyrants. One can only strike at kings through the head.
I vote for death of the tyrant.
You're a very ordinary man.
On January 21st, 1793, Louis XVI was executed.
Among those in the newly formed National Convention
who voted for the death of the monarch,
was the artist who'd once taken commissions from him,
Jacques-Louis David.
So France had been reborn as a republic,
and David, now a model citizen,
sat proudly on the benches of the convention as MP for Paris,
along with his political idols, Marat and Robespierre.
There was no going back.
From now on, David and his art belonged to the Revolution.
Wherever it lead, he would follow,
and where it lead was dictatorship.
The country was at war, its enemies were outside and inside France.
This was no time for tender feelings.
Countless people who had thought of themselves as friends,
not enemies, of the Revolution, were fingered and denounced.
Among the first to be arrested were his old friends and patrons,
Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier.
She survived the guillotine,
he didn't.
For Marat and Robespierre, there could never be enough guillotined heads to feel safe.
In 1789, Marat had called for a few hundred.
Now, he called for hundreds of thousands.
Someone had to stop it, and that someone was Charlotte Corday,
25 years old, from the town of Caen in Normandy.
No royalist. A revolutionary, in fact.
But a bitter enemy of Marat and his followers.
The dictatorship, she thought, had made a mockery of the Republic of Liberty.
She cast herself as a tragic heroine whose destiny was to save her country.
On the 9th July, 1793, Charlotte Corday got on a coach bound for Paris.
When she arrived, she came here to the Palais Royale,
bought a black hat with green feathers and a six-inch knife.
In a cheap hotel room, she wrote a speech
explaining why she had to kill Marat and sewed it to her dress,
along with her certificate of baptism.
And as Corday was planning the murder,
David was paying his friend Marat a visit.
He found him propped up in his bath,
using an upturned wooden box as an improvised desk.
So little time, so many traitors to denounce.
Did the Friend of the People ever rest from his patriotic toil?
The next day, Charlotte Corday walked over to Marat's house on the rue des Cordeliers.
Barred at the door, she tried delivering a handwritten note warning him about plots,
hoping he was gonna rise to the bait. No reply.
That evening, she tried again.
As she arrived, two men were delivering bread and newspapers.
She was in.
Corday pretended she was an informer and gave Marat a list of traitors.
''I will have them guillotined in a week'', he said.
And that was it.
Out came the knife, straight into Marat's chest.
So the Friend of the People was lost to the Revolution.
Inside the National Convention, grief-stricken deputies cried their eyes out,
authentically or not.
What they most wanted, I think, was for Marat to come back to them.
''Come back, come back. We need you, all of France needs you.''
And then one of the most theatrical deputies rose to his feet and shouted,
''David, where are you? There is one more job for you.''
And David of the swollen cheek miraculously found his voice.
I shall do it.
''I shall do it, ''he said.
''I will paint Marat. ''
It was midsummer, the hottest in anyone's memory.
The embalmers, under David's direction, were working overtime,
preparing Marat's body for the funeral.
But his normally ghastly red-flesh colour was rapidly turning green.
David had wanted Marat displayed sitting upright, working for the good of the people.
But the decomposing corpse refused to co-operate.
Drenched in perfume, it had to be laid flat out for the grieving public to file past.
The funeral would inevitably fade in people's memory.
The painting, though, would never fade.
It was Marat's best revenge,
for it would make sure that he would always be around.
Here was someone transfigured by goodness, honesty and patriotic selflessness.
''Look upon him,'' David is saying, ''And you will see the highest type of humanity.''
He's cleaned Marat up, of course.
The skin has the colour of cool stone,
the wound is unmissable, yet at the same time almost delicate,
like the incision in the side of Christ on the cross.
The white sheets seem shroud-like,
ghostly wrappings of the great man as he hovers between our world and posterity.
It's a cult image,
and it tells you to believe.
Its genius lies in the fact that it's also a story for the people.
For once, the hero isn't Roman, he's one of them.
It's the first great work for the faces in the crowd,
the singers of the Marseillaise.
You can almost feel David imagining whole families in front of this painting,
a father saying to his children, ''Look, there's his inkwell."
''Look, there's the letter of the wicked Corday, stained with the blood of the good Marat.''
But David is not showing the letter that got Corday into Marat's house,
the one with the list of traitors.
It's a different letter.
One that would make Marat seem like a victim of his own kindness.
''It's enough that I am truly unhappy to have the right to your benevolence, '' it says.
On top of the box is another letter, from the widow of a soldier fallen in battle.
With it is a donation Marat is about to send her.
Two women, then, the good mother and the bad Corday.
There's no attempt to give a sense of Marat's room here.
No crossed pistols hanging on the wall, no fake columns.
Instead, the entire top half of the painting is filled with loose, feathery strokes
that could be wall or just indeterminate space.
The space of forever.
But then that box, grainy, solid.
''He was one of you, '' the box says. ''One of the poor and suffering.
''But now you can't reach him.
''No one can, except through this. ''
But even while you're held spellbound,
another voice inside your head says, ''Hold on a minute,"
''this is the purest witchcraft.''
What David has done here is to glorify a paranoid,
whose greatest satisfaction was the persecution of thousands of people
whose only crime was to be lukewarm about politics.
This is an accomplice of terror.
Of course, it never occurred to David that he was betraying art.
''Oh, no,'' he would have said. ''I'm fulfilling its highest, noblest purpose,"
''that of moral re-education."
''That's what all those altarpieces that once hung in churches did,"
''but those were all lies and fairytales."
''We have a new church now, the church of revolutionary virtue. ''
So why do I like David?
Well, I don't. He's a monster.
But he makes ideas blaze in dry ice.
He is a fantastic propagandist, no one better.
Albert Speer could just as well roll over and die.
And what was the point of it all?
Well, it's a revenge on wit, on chat and on banter.
But it was more than that.
This is art designed to make those who saw it virtuous citizens.
And it's all so perfect, so tragic, so poetic you almost believe it.
But like a lot of art designed to improve humanity,
it has the opposite effect.
Because it's a lie.
Three months after the assassination of Marat,
on October 16th, 1793, Marie Antoinette went to the guillotine.
David saw her tumbrel going down the street,
while people spat in their hands
and tried to throw the gobs on the woman who'd been queen.
He sketched her impassively.
But David's got more important things on his mind than the fate of Marie Antoinette.
He's now the official director of revolutionary propaganda,
to the exclusion of practically everything else.
When his wife disapproved of his zeal, he divorced her.
David has become an enforcer, sitting on the Committee for General Security,
hunting down the treacherously half-hearted, signing warrants for their execution.
The terror had begun,
and David had become part of the great engine of killing.
And as the tempo of the guillotine got faster,
David busied himself with ever more extravagant spectacles to educate the people.
Casts of thousands, massed singing virgins, statues on the site of the Bastille.
A festival of the supreme being,
starring the high priest of the Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre.
In the end, David was a victim of his own success.
The hard-nosed men who were running the war knew that bread and guns mattered,
and virgins and doves didn't.
So David wasn't just a distraction, he was a menace. Get rid of him.
And David's downfall was inextricably linked to the fate of Robespierre.
Increasingly, Robespierre was spoken of
not as saviour of the Revolution, but tyrant,
and David, the window-dresser of his tyranny, was going down with him.
Robespierre was attacked in the Convention, the dreaded words ''outside the law'' uttered.
Incredulous, David made a spectacle of himself.
''Robespierre,'' he shouted.
''If you drink the hemlock, I will drink it with you. ''
But of course, he didn't.
The next day, David was suddenly indisposed, so he missed his own date with martyrdom.
He was not there beside Robespierre when he was guillotined
and the blade at last came down on the terror.
But they came for David, nonetheless.
Vilified as tyrant of the arts, David tried to stammer a defence.
No one could understand what he was saying, but they noticed how pale he was,
how the sweat ran through his clothes and dripped onto the floor.
In prison, he managed to get hold of some paints and he painted this self-portrait.
You can see the famous tumour and the twist it gives to his face,
but that's as far as the truth goes.
Because what we're seeing is not the old propaganda master, that's for sure,
but young David, 20 years at least taken off,
all innocent, hair romantically dishevelled,
coat open to expose his pure, transparent heart.
And he's done himself with palette and brushes.
''Why me?'' it says.
''I'm just a painter. ''
Yeah, right.
Led astray, were you? Just doing your job?
I don't think so.
But guess what? The art plea worked.
David got out of prison,
and spent the next years doing spectacular, uncontroversial portraits like this.
Monsieur Seriziat, his brother-in-law.
This is what the Revolution of the virtuous had become,
the Republican tricolour reduced to a fashion accessory.
When he does do history paintings, they're pleas to stop killing.
No more politics, then, for Jacques-Louis David, right?
Wrong.
The old demon never really goes away.
Once bitten by power, you stay bitten.
He airbrushed Marat, why shouldn't he airbrush Napoleon?
When Napoleon was crowned emperor in 1805,
David was slavishly at his side, official glamoriser.
But then, of course, Napoleon was defeated, the monarchy restored.
Lots of Napoleon-lovers were forgiven,
but not David.
He'd done something that could never be forgiven.
He'd done this,
the most notorious image produced by the terror.
France had had enough of Jacques-Louis David.
Banished from his own country, David ended up here in Brussels,
where he did paintings of increasingly high-gloss weirdness,
a big fish in a very small pond.
In France, they mostly talked about him as a back number,
''Oh, David, Brutus and all that. Isn't he dead?''
When he did die, in December, 1825,
the government in Paris refused permission for his family to bring the body home.
No king-killers allowed.
David's paintings, though, were up for sale.
Before that, they were put on public display. Not, however, the notorious Marat.
That was kept under guard at the artist's son's house.
Admission by private arrangement.
And you take a look at it and you know why.
If ever there was a work of art that says that beauty can be lethal,
it's Jacques-Louis David's Death of Marat.