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A funeral cort�ge clatters its way
through the cobbled streets of Brussels.
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Inside the carriage is the body
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of the most powerful French painter
there had ever been.
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00:00:28,807 --> 00:00:30,525
Jacques-Louis David.
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00:00:37,967 --> 00:00:41,880
Following the carriage
is a solemn procession of art students,
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00:00:41,967 --> 00:00:45,880
holding up placards
with the names of his paintings.
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All but one, which happened to be
the greatest of them all.
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It was a picture which hadn't seen
the light of day for 30 years.
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No one, least of all the man who painted it,
dared show it.
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00:01:09,167 --> 00:01:13,604
No wonder. It was the most spellbinding thing
he had ever made.
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A painting before which people had once swooned.
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00:01:19,647 --> 00:01:23,117
A painting both beautiful and repulsive.
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00:01:27,087 --> 00:01:30,523
But the picture was also a guilty secret,
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the real reason why David's body
was refused burial in France.
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00:01:37,207 --> 00:01:39,880
So, what was it about this painting
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which made it both his unforgettable
masterpiece and his unforgivable crime?
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On the 19th September, 1783,
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an enormous taffeta spheroid
wobbled its way unsteadily
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above the palace of Versailles.
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In the basket were a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
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When a violent gust of wind made a tear
near the top of the balloon,
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there were fears for the barnyard aeronauts.
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In the end, though, the balloon survived
and it was judged the animals had not suffered.
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00:03:00,127 --> 00:03:03,437
This was, though, a major breach of protocol.
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00:03:03,887 --> 00:03:07,323
Versailles had been built to control spectacle.
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00:03:07,807 --> 00:03:11,595
That way, the mystery of absolutism
was preserved.
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00:03:16,047 --> 00:03:20,882
On the ground, it was still, to some extent,
an aristocratic vision.
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In the air, it'd become democratic.
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In Paris, a more down-to-earth thrill.
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Beaumarchais'play, The Marriage of Figaro,
is about to open after several government bans.
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The king had called it detestable.
That guaranteed a crowd.
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00:03:54,727 --> 00:03:55,921
No, monsieur.
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Because you are a great lord,
you think you're a great genius?
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00:04:01,287 --> 00:04:03,847
Nobility, rank,
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position, fortune,
how proud they make a man feel.
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00:04:08,727 --> 00:04:11,719
What have you done to deserve such advantages?
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00:04:12,927 --> 00:04:17,523
Put yourself to the trouble of being born,
nothing more. For the rest...
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...you're a very ordinary man.
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00:04:29,007 --> 00:04:33,523
There were no signs
that the bravos died on the lips of the nobility,
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even as they began to realise
the significance of the attack.
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Talk about signing your own death warrant.
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00:04:42,567 --> 00:04:45,559
But then, how were they to know that,
in under 10 years,
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they'd be on the receiving end
of something far more wounding than words.
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00:04:51,167 --> 00:04:53,681
Look, citizens,
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at the glorious destiny that awaits us.
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You have a whole nation to mobilise.
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00:05:03,847 --> 00:05:04,916
No more...
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00:05:05,007 --> 00:05:08,283
Still, the French Revolution
could never have happened
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00:05:08,367 --> 00:05:10,642
without this sense of theatre.
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00:05:11,767 --> 00:05:17,683
Its great orators, like Danton, were performers,
shamelessly playing to the gallery,
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milking the cheers and the hisses.
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00:05:20,727 --> 00:05:23,082
Reason fights on your side,
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and you have not even begun
to astonish the world.
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00:05:29,207 --> 00:05:32,438
And if they were really
going to create a new France,
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they needed someone to create images
to go with the words.
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00:05:40,807 --> 00:05:44,163
That someone was Jacques-Louis David.
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00:05:44,887 --> 00:05:50,041
It was David who would give people
the vision of what a true citizen was.
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00:05:51,087 --> 00:05:56,923
His art, then, wasn't meant as gallery fodder.
It was an entire way of life.
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00:06:02,567 --> 00:06:03,841
Or death.
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00:06:04,967 --> 00:06:09,597
I'm not sure how I feel about this painting,
except deeply conflicted.
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Yes, it's tragically beautiful.
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But to say that is to separate it
from the appalling moment of its creation.
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00:06:20,527 --> 00:06:25,920
This is Jean-Paul Marat,
the most paranoid of the Revolution's fanatics.
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He's been assassinated in his bath.
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00:06:32,127 --> 00:06:37,440
Marat was someone for whom there could
never be enough terror, never enough killing.
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00:06:38,887 --> 00:06:42,846
But for David, Marat isn't a monster. He's a saint.
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00:06:44,047 --> 00:06:48,325
This painting transforms Marat
into a paragon of virtue.
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00:06:49,367 --> 00:06:51,597
Breathtaking? For sure.
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00:06:51,687 --> 00:06:54,520
But maybe also just a little mad.
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00:07:00,327 --> 00:07:05,276
Which isn't to say that Jacques-Louis David
was some sort of malevolent crackpot.
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00:07:05,687 --> 00:07:09,316
All his life, he was really only looking for virtue.
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00:07:11,127 --> 00:07:16,520
There was something painfully earnest
about him, resolute, self-contained.
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One, two, three.
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00:07:21,527 --> 00:07:24,325
Not surprising, really. When he was seven,
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his father, an iron merchant,
had been killed in a pistol duel.
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Something iron must have entered the boy's soul.
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He was looked after by friendly uncles
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who wanted him to be a lawyer or an architect,
but David would hear of nothing but painting.
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So the uncles sent him on to his mother's cousin,
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who just happened to be
the most successful painter in France.
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00:07:57,087 --> 00:08:02,400
Francois Boucher knew exactly
what art was supposed to deliver for the nobility.
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00:08:03,567 --> 00:08:07,446
The pinkest, flossiest eye candy imaginable,
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00:08:07,527 --> 00:08:11,281
rosy bums romping on frothy pillows.
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00:08:21,167 --> 00:08:24,796
But perhaps
Boucher saw in the sober, young David
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someone for whom melting beauty
was not going to be the point of art.
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So he sent him on to another master.
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But Boucher said to David,
''Come and see me from time to time,
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and I will teach you my warmth.''
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But David would never be at home
in the pleasure industry. He was a loner.
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Once he got involved in a swordfight,
and took a vicious slash on his cheek.
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The wound grew into a benign tumour.
That was the first thing anyone noticed about him.
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His enemies would call him,
''David with the swollen cheek. ''
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Accidents like this happened every day.
Walk down any Paris street or into any salon,
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and you would have seen a rich gallery
of the deformed and the disfigured.
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Terrible smallpox scars, club feet, harelips, the lot.
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But some accidents matter to people
and some don't. This one did.
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David's disfigurement meant
he couldn't talk properly.
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Few people could understand what he was saying,
so he ended up not saying very much.
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00:09:53,287 --> 00:09:57,405
When he did talk, he was painfully conscious
of being a stammerer.
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00:10:07,727 --> 00:10:12,755
If there was ever a moment in history
when wit and banter really mattered,
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it was surely in 18th-century France.
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00:10:15,807 --> 00:10:22,246
But David of the swollen cheek couldn't talk,
he couldn't chat, he just mumbled.
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00:10:26,527 --> 00:10:28,563
Maybe there was one consolation,
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00:10:28,647 --> 00:10:33,926
for there was someone else who was famous
for his handicaps in the wit department,
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00:10:34,007 --> 00:10:36,237
and he happened to be the king.
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00:10:41,047 --> 00:10:45,279
Louis XVI was born to worry about happiness.
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His grandfather, Louis XV,
had designed Versailles around its pursuit.
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00:10:51,727 --> 00:10:56,562
But for his young successor,
happiness would always be hard work.
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00:11:03,607 --> 00:11:08,920
When Louis came to the throne in 1775,
he wanted the best for everyone,
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00:11:09,687 --> 00:11:12,360
but he just didn't know how to get it.
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00:11:15,607 --> 00:11:18,075
The saddest thing about Louis XVI
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00:11:18,167 --> 00:11:22,957
was that the king who went down in history
as the reactionary symbol of the old regime
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00:11:23,047 --> 00:11:28,804
actually thought of himself as thoroughly modern,
deeply into science and technology.
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00:11:28,887 --> 00:11:31,321
Balloons? Couldn't get enough of them.
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00:11:34,887 --> 00:11:41,076
His reign, which ended in catastrophe,
began in a sunburst of giddy optimism,
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00:11:42,247 --> 00:11:44,442
and a change in taste, too.
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00:11:44,887 --> 00:11:49,961
Out went gold ormolu,
in came modesty, the cult of nature.
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00:11:56,167 --> 00:12:02,242
Even Louis XVI's young Austrian queen,
Marie Antoinette, was a devotee.
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00:12:02,847 --> 00:12:09,036
She built a toy farm here at Versailles,
went off milking cows in the royal dairy.
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00:12:10,167 --> 00:12:13,364
So, no more couches and courtesans.
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Instead, tenderness, simplicity.
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Tears were especially prized
as evidence of feeling.
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00:12:28,687 --> 00:12:31,076
Paintings like this went down well.
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00:12:31,167 --> 00:12:35,479
Girl Weeping Over Dead Canary
by Jean-Baptiste Greuze.
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People wept when they saw it.
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00:12:46,727 --> 00:12:49,082
Feelings mattered to David, too,
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but not the shallow kind
embraced by the fashionable elite.
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No, David was in search of something steelier.
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It was amidst the stones of Rome that he found it.
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00:13:13,607 --> 00:13:17,600
Everything changed for David here.
Not just what he thought about art,
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but what he thought
about the future of his country.
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00:13:23,887 --> 00:13:26,879
So what were the stones telling him?
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00:13:27,367 --> 00:13:30,677
''This is what happens
to decadent empires, '' they said.
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00:13:31,487 --> 00:13:35,002
Once there had been a free Rome, the Republic,
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austere,just, virile, packed with flinty heroes.
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00:13:41,767 --> 00:13:44,406
But effeminate luxury had killed it.
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00:13:45,087 --> 00:13:50,161
Liberty had surrendered to despotism
and the Romans had become slaves.
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00:13:52,167 --> 00:13:57,287
How that message from history
echoed in David's fertile brain.
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00:14:01,007 --> 00:14:05,046
And in 1785, David delivered that message,
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00:14:05,127 --> 00:14:09,996
like a package of bad news
for the complacent and the over-powdered.
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Welcome to the first public art show in the world,
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in the palace of the Louvre, no less.
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00:14:19,167 --> 00:14:22,318
This wasn't always a hushed museum.
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00:14:22,407 --> 00:14:28,721
Every two years, it staged the greatest
public entertainment in Paris, and it was free.
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00:14:34,727 --> 00:14:39,437
Word had got out
there was something sensational to see.
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00:14:40,247 --> 00:14:43,364
Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii.
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00:14:45,687 --> 00:14:49,282
It's a painting about a country in crisis.
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00:14:51,047 --> 00:14:54,198
To avoid war,
the Romans have chosen three of their men
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to fight with three from the enemy.
Last one standing wins.
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00:15:00,887 --> 00:15:06,245
The cruel twist is that one of the Roman boys
is married to an enemy girl.
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00:15:08,327 --> 00:15:11,364
Widowhood and orphanhood beckon.
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00:15:17,047 --> 00:15:20,881
But none of the men
are paying the slightest attention to that.
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00:15:20,967 --> 00:15:27,566
This is a boys' bonding picture,
a tight-packed display of muscle, veins and steel.
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00:15:27,927 --> 00:15:32,682
The only splash of colour
is the blood red of that cape.
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00:15:37,967 --> 00:15:42,085
The father solemnly swears them
to conquer or die,
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his naked hand on the sharp blade.
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00:16:11,487 --> 00:16:17,084
At least 60,000 people would have come
to the exhibition to see this painting,
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00:16:17,167 --> 00:16:21,240
and not just the bigwigs either,
but shopkeepers, fishwives,
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00:16:21,327 --> 00:16:23,921
the whole sweaty, growling public.
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They would be David's people.
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And they looked
at that strange line dance of death,
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and they didn't know
whether to be thrilled or scared.
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00:16:42,647 --> 00:16:46,765
It felt like a call to arms
in the face of a great crisis.
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00:16:50,727 --> 00:16:56,006
And that crisis was happening
not in ancient Rome, but here and now,
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in Louis XVI's France.
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00:17:01,087 --> 00:17:05,922
It began, as so many revolutions do,
with a financial meltdown.
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00:17:06,927 --> 00:17:11,239
France had taken pride
in helping America to win independence,
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but it had come at a huge cost.
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00:17:16,887 --> 00:17:20,800
Avoiding bankruptcy meant more taxes.
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00:17:23,927 --> 00:17:26,236
So, awkward questions were being asked
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about why the nobility and the clergy
were tax-exempt,
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while the scarecrow poor
were supposed to empty their pockets.
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00:17:35,007 --> 00:17:37,726
Wasn't the nation all in it together?
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The nation? Well, that was a new idea.
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00:17:43,767 --> 00:17:47,885
And while we're at it,
how about elected representatives, too?
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00:17:51,647 --> 00:17:56,163
Oh, it went without saying
that the new France would still be a monarchy.
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00:17:57,207 --> 00:18:00,244
The queen, with all those diamonds,
needed putting in her place,
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00:18:00,327 --> 00:18:02,602
but the king was a good fellow.
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00:18:05,087 --> 00:18:09,763
No reason to assume a social apocalypse
around the corner.
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00:18:21,927 --> 00:18:28,685
For a while, that's how David himself felt,
which didn't mean a little reform wouldn't help.
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00:18:28,767 --> 00:18:30,837
There was a lot of deadwood around.
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00:18:30,927 --> 00:18:36,604
For a start, those non-entities
at the Academy of Painting, they'd have to go.
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00:18:37,087 --> 00:18:41,638
When he was a struggling artist,
they'd rejected him four times.
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00:18:41,727 --> 00:18:45,515
Now he was successful,
they barely tolerated him.
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00:18:45,607 --> 00:18:50,317
Well, their time was up.
Anyway, he didn't need them any more.
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00:18:50,407 --> 00:18:53,604
Now he had intelligent, liberal-minded followers.
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Here are two of those good eggs,
rich, smart and affable.
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00:19:08,407 --> 00:19:13,401
Mr and Mrs Charming,
Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier.
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00:19:14,327 --> 00:19:16,887
He is a famous experimental chemist.
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00:19:17,407 --> 00:19:21,036
That flask on the floor is for measuring gases.
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00:19:22,727 --> 00:19:26,686
Marie-Anne, who'd married him at 13,
was more than a wife.
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00:19:27,207 --> 00:19:31,883
That casual hand on his shoulder
tells us she was a true partner,
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00:19:32,527 --> 00:19:38,045
translating articles from English for him,
designing illustrations for his books.
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00:19:42,487 --> 00:19:46,719
He's filthy rich,
but he does have a social conscience.
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00:19:46,807 --> 00:19:50,436
A lot of his money
has been put into draining swamps
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to eradicate malaria, that sort of thing.
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00:19:56,207 --> 00:19:59,722
To look at the portrait,
you'd think David has captured a vision
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00:19:59,807 --> 00:20:03,277
of the kind of people
who ought to be governing France,
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00:20:03,607 --> 00:20:06,440
humane, affectionate and modern.
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00:20:07,607 --> 00:20:13,443
Well, for 7,000 livres, he wasn't even
going to hint at the other Lavoisier,
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the one who made money
collecting taxes with the help of a private army.
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00:20:19,527 --> 00:20:25,477
No, David took his fee, but when the time came
for him to show the painting at the Louvre,
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00:20:25,567 --> 00:20:30,243
he ended up withdrawing it.
But then he would, wouldn't he?
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00:20:31,247 --> 00:20:36,879
Between the paint drying and the show opening,
everything in France had changed.
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00:20:38,087 --> 00:20:39,884
It was 1789.
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00:20:46,407 --> 00:20:49,160
Hope and desperation in equal parts.
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00:20:50,687 --> 00:20:53,326
Hope from a representative assembly,
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00:20:53,607 --> 00:20:58,601
the Estate's General elected
from thousands of meetings all over France.
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00:21:03,167 --> 00:21:08,525
But desperation too, because it was happening
at the worst possible time.
210
00:21:09,447 --> 00:21:12,644
Harvest wipeouts, soaring prices.
211
00:21:15,007 --> 00:21:18,966
Put hope and desperation together,
and what do you get?
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00:21:19,887 --> 00:21:22,959
The political equivalent of nitroglycerine.
213
00:21:29,247 --> 00:21:35,004
When the Estate's General met here
in Versailles, in the spring of 1789,
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00:21:35,447 --> 00:21:40,396
it all boiled down to one question.
Would the deputies do it the old way,
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00:21:40,487 --> 00:21:43,081
meeting as three separate orders,
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00:21:43,167 --> 00:21:48,195
nobles, clergy and commoners,
or would they do it the new way,
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00:21:48,287 --> 00:21:52,917
and for the first time come together
as a single national assembly?
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00:21:56,607 --> 00:22:00,646
The commoners, among them
a young lawyer, Maximilien Robespierre,
219
00:22:00,727 --> 00:22:02,001
forced the issue,
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00:22:02,087 --> 00:22:05,523
declaring themselves the only legitimate body,
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00:22:05,607 --> 00:22:09,043
priests and nobles welcome to join.
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00:22:09,807 --> 00:22:12,162
A surprising number of them did.
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00:22:20,087 --> 00:22:24,046
It's the 20th June, 1789,
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00:22:24,127 --> 00:22:28,359
and it's one of those
late-spring torrential downpours.
225
00:22:28,447 --> 00:22:32,679
And the 600 deputies of the Third Estate,
the commoners,
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00:22:32,767 --> 00:22:36,123
plus their new allies
among the nobles and the clergy,
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00:22:36,207 --> 00:22:39,722
have been locked out of their meeting hall.
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00:22:39,807 --> 00:22:44,722
A certain Doctor Guillotin
knows a tennis court quite close by.
229
00:22:47,247 --> 00:22:52,116
The mayor of Paris, Sylvain Bailly,
is suddenly the star of the show.
230
00:22:52,727 --> 00:22:57,039
Swear an oath to God and the fatherland
never to separate,
231
00:22:57,127 --> 00:23:00,278
until we have made a sound and just constitution.
232
00:23:07,407 --> 00:23:12,845
For the first time, aristocrats,
clergy and bourgeoisie were meeting together
233
00:23:12,927 --> 00:23:15,202
without the king's permission.
234
00:23:18,167 --> 00:23:23,480
Arms stretch, bodies embrace,
life had caught up with art.
235
00:23:25,807 --> 00:23:29,880
David's Rome reborn was the new France.
236
00:23:36,647 --> 00:23:41,516
A year later, David got to work
on his depiction of the Tennis Court Oath.
237
00:23:42,567 --> 00:23:46,640
It's a picture filled with noise.
The roar of the oath.
238
00:23:46,727 --> 00:23:49,844
The crash of a great electrical storm.
239
00:23:51,367 --> 00:23:55,679
The Revolution as an unstoppable force of nature.
240
00:24:00,287 --> 00:24:03,882
And at the centre of it all, an enormous space.
241
00:24:04,847 --> 00:24:07,680
Except it's not empty at all.
242
00:24:07,767 --> 00:24:13,364
It's filled with light and rushing wind,
the furious energy of liberty.
243
00:24:13,967 --> 00:24:15,639
It's an idea.
244
00:24:15,727 --> 00:24:20,164
An idea so big, it dwarfs the humans who enact it.
245
00:24:37,127 --> 00:24:41,086
The drawing was supposed to be
turned into a huge painting.
246
00:24:41,167 --> 00:24:46,958
This is just a small section of it.
But as you can see, it was never finished.
247
00:24:47,047 --> 00:24:51,518
Before David even had a chance
to put clothes on these nude models,
248
00:24:51,607 --> 00:24:54,758
many of them would be dead or disgraced.
249
00:24:58,607 --> 00:25:03,886
The great message of unity and freedom
would soon be quaintly out of date.
250
00:25:05,007 --> 00:25:10,206
Instead of arms outstretched,
there was an epidemic of finger-pointing.
251
00:25:14,767 --> 00:25:20,717
July 1789 ought to have been a moment
of golden optimism for the reborn France.
252
00:25:21,607 --> 00:25:27,318
Louis XVI seemed finally to have accepted
the results of the Tennis Court Oath,
253
00:25:27,407 --> 00:25:30,797
that there was now a National Assembly in France.
254
00:25:30,887 --> 00:25:34,323
But here in the Palais Royale,
the Speaker's Corner of Paris,
255
00:25:34,407 --> 00:25:36,238
nobody actually believed him.
256
00:25:36,327 --> 00:25:42,562
People said the king had secretly stocked
the fortress of the Bastille with gunpowder,
257
00:25:42,647 --> 00:25:47,277
so Paris was literally
a powder keg waiting to happen.
258
00:26:00,327 --> 00:26:07,244
On the morning of July 14th, a crowd
of about 900 converged on the grim fortress.
259
00:26:10,247 --> 00:26:16,117
It's always the same, isn't it? Someone panics,
there's a first shot. No one knows from where.
260
00:26:16,527 --> 00:26:18,722
Cries of ''Massacre!''
261
00:26:18,807 --> 00:26:21,844
Then, a serious exchange of fire.
262
00:26:24,567 --> 00:26:30,563
It took an afternoon of chaos and 83 lives
before the governor yielded the Bastille.
263
00:26:32,287 --> 00:26:34,847
He was promised safe conduct.
264
00:26:34,927 --> 00:26:39,079
What he got
was his head cut off with a fruit knife.
265
00:26:46,247 --> 00:26:50,763
But then, whoever said revolutions
were going to be bloodless?
266
00:27:01,287 --> 00:27:05,917
Here's David's contribution
to the decapitation campaign.
267
00:27:06,727 --> 00:27:09,321
It's the darkest thing he ever did.
268
00:27:12,087 --> 00:27:14,840
It's a Roman father again.
269
00:27:15,007 --> 00:27:16,963
Brutus, brooding in the darkness,
270
00:27:17,047 --> 00:27:22,599
has ordered the execution of his sons,
for plotting to bring back the monarchy.
271
00:27:23,807 --> 00:27:28,517
Their headless bodies are brought to him,
and he literally doesn't look back.
272
00:27:35,767 --> 00:27:40,397
Only that right foot
is a sign of his repressed emotion.
273
00:27:44,687 --> 00:27:47,565
Brutus has gone to the dark side.
274
00:27:50,127 --> 00:27:55,565
Light floods the boys' mother,
who sees only her headless children.
275
00:27:58,567 --> 00:28:01,001
You feel the tug of the heart.
276
00:28:15,887 --> 00:28:20,403
There's something chilling about this painting,
like all David's great pictures.
277
00:28:20,487 --> 00:28:25,720
Even as you marvel at its brilliance,
your blood runs cold at what it's saying.
278
00:28:26,047 --> 00:28:28,845
Look what's at the dead centre of the picture,
279
00:28:28,927 --> 00:28:34,923
a pair of sharp scissors,
the hard, cold metal that's cut the family ties.
280
00:28:38,047 --> 00:28:40,959
David seems to have a thing about blades.
281
00:28:41,047 --> 00:28:44,801
They've marked his face
and now they've marked his mind.
282
00:28:50,727 --> 00:28:54,515
From father to fatherland is but a short step.
283
00:28:55,607 --> 00:29:02,046
The first two years of the Revolution swung
wildly from mass euphoria to paranoia,
284
00:29:04,087 --> 00:29:09,366
orgies of public hugging,
spasms of vindictive lynching.
285
00:29:41,327 --> 00:29:45,525
Why the anger? Because people were still hungry.
286
00:29:45,607 --> 00:29:48,405
Bread prices had gone through the roof,
287
00:29:48,487 --> 00:29:51,797
and people had discovered you couldn't eat votes.
288
00:29:51,887 --> 00:29:54,196
Someone was to blame.
289
00:29:58,287 --> 00:30:02,917
''The baker and the baker's wife',
the jeering market women called them,
290
00:30:03,007 --> 00:30:08,798
as they dragged Louis and Marie Antoinette
out of the safety of Versailles, to Paris.
291
00:30:10,887 --> 00:30:15,119
The queen, they said,
was no better than an Austrian whore.
292
00:30:15,687 --> 00:30:17,723
David thought the same.
293
00:30:17,847 --> 00:30:22,921
''The rioters should have strangled her,
cut the carcass to pieces, ''he wrote.
294
00:30:26,647 --> 00:30:31,357
He was at this time
an odd mix of dogma and uncertainty.
295
00:30:31,967 --> 00:30:35,755
Like millions of his countrymen,
he thought the queen was a monster,
296
00:30:35,847 --> 00:30:40,045
but he hadn't given up
on the idea of Louis as citizen king.
297
00:30:40,127 --> 00:30:43,005
He even signed up to do a portrait of him.
298
00:30:44,247 --> 00:30:48,160
So he was still very much a political ing�nue,
299
00:30:48,247 --> 00:30:51,717
until, that is, he met the likes of him.
300
00:30:55,207 --> 00:31:01,806
Jean-Paul Marat, balloonist,
failed inventor, newspaper editor, fanatic.
301
00:31:03,767 --> 00:31:05,485
Here he is in his bath,
302
00:31:05,567 --> 00:31:11,164
the only place he could get respite
from the excruciatingly itchy skin disease
303
00:31:11,287 --> 00:31:13,960
that left him raw and scaly.
304
00:31:14,847 --> 00:31:17,805
Marat played on hysteria like a drum.
305
00:31:18,207 --> 00:31:23,122
His paper, The Friend of the People,
yelled and cursed and denounced,
306
00:31:23,207 --> 00:31:28,361
ripping off the masks of false patriots
whom he fingered as traitors.
307
00:31:29,527 --> 00:31:32,405
''There are plots everywhere, ''he screamed.
308
00:31:37,007 --> 00:31:42,639
The street, caught between fear and
hyperventilation, ate up the conspiracy theories.
309
00:31:43,127 --> 00:31:46,199
Marie Antoinette, malevolent slut,
310
00:31:46,287 --> 00:31:50,280
plotting with her brother,
the Emperor of Austria, against France.
311
00:31:51,287 --> 00:31:52,606
Imagine.
312
00:31:55,327 --> 00:31:57,636
Except it was true.
313
00:31:57,727 --> 00:32:02,721
In June, 1791 , the royal couple was caught
in their escape bid
314
00:32:02,807 --> 00:32:06,482
and taken back, virtual prisoners, to Paris.
315
00:32:08,647 --> 00:32:15,120
Austria threatened France with dire consequences
should anything happen to the king and queen.
316
00:32:15,607 --> 00:32:19,566
Now, the royal couple seem like the enemy within.
317
00:32:22,327 --> 00:32:25,364
The following year, war broke out,
318
00:32:26,127 --> 00:32:30,359
and their days, and the days
of the French monarchy, were numbered.
319
00:32:39,167 --> 00:32:44,685
Now, fighting for France
meant fighting against royalty.
320
00:32:52,167 --> 00:32:56,797
Five days after the war started, in April, 1792,
321
00:32:56,927 --> 00:33:01,318
there was a dinner in the garrison town
of Strasbourg, near the front.
322
00:33:02,047 --> 00:33:05,960
The idea was to boost
the shaky morale of the army.
323
00:33:06,087 --> 00:33:09,557
So, there were toasts, there were speeches.
324
00:33:09,647 --> 00:33:14,198
''Long live liberty'', ''Death to tyrants'',
the usual thing.
325
00:33:14,687 --> 00:33:17,326
What was missing, though, was a good song
326
00:33:17,407 --> 00:33:21,923
that would send a surge of self-belief
right through the camp.
327
00:33:22,607 --> 00:33:28,159
It was Rouget de Lisle,
regimental engineer and part-time composer,
328
00:33:28,247 --> 00:33:31,080
who came up with that song.
329
00:34:17,887 --> 00:34:21,004
You belong to something glorious now.
330
00:34:21,087 --> 00:34:24,204
You belong to the Patrie, the fatherland.
331
00:34:30,647 --> 00:34:31,636
MAN: Everything is in motion.
332
00:34:31,727 --> 00:34:36,278
Everyone burns to fight. To conquer our enemies,
333
00:34:37,567 --> 00:34:44,245
we must have daring, more daring, always daring.
And France will be saved!
334
00:34:52,247 --> 00:34:57,879
In August, 1792, the guards
protecting the royal family were slaughtered,
335
00:34:59,167 --> 00:35:03,718
Louis, Marie Antoinette and their children
were taken to prison.
336
00:35:11,967 --> 00:35:17,485
One must never compromise with tyrants.
One can only strike at kings through the head.
337
00:35:17,567 --> 00:35:19,683
I vote for death of the tyrant.
338
00:35:25,847 --> 00:35:28,486
You're a very ordinary man.
339
00:35:32,847 --> 00:35:39,116
On January 21st, 1793,
Louis XVI was executed.
340
00:35:45,727 --> 00:35:49,197
Among those in the newly formed
National Convention
341
00:35:49,287 --> 00:35:51,403
who voted for the death of the monarch,
342
00:35:51,487 --> 00:35:54,877
was the artist who'd once
taken commissions from him,
343
00:35:54,967 --> 00:35:57,322
Jacques-Louis David.
344
00:36:24,647 --> 00:36:27,798
So France had been reborn as a republic,
345
00:36:27,887 --> 00:36:30,003
and David, now a model citizen,
346
00:36:30,087 --> 00:36:34,365
sat proudly on the benches of the convention
as MP for Paris,
347
00:36:34,447 --> 00:36:38,235
along with his political idols,
Marat and Robespierre.
348
00:36:43,407 --> 00:36:45,284
There was no going back.
349
00:36:45,367 --> 00:36:49,645
From now on,
David and his art belonged to the Revolution.
350
00:36:51,967 --> 00:36:54,606
Wherever it lead, he would follow,
351
00:36:54,687 --> 00:36:57,645
and where it lead was dictatorship.
352
00:37:01,127 --> 00:37:06,247
The country was at war,
its enemies were outside and inside France.
353
00:37:07,207 --> 00:37:10,040
This was no time for tender feelings.
354
00:37:13,327 --> 00:37:16,717
Countless people
who had thought of themselves as friends,
355
00:37:16,807 --> 00:37:21,164
not enemies, of the Revolution,
were fingered and denounced.
356
00:37:26,407 --> 00:37:30,844
Among the first to be arrested
were his old friends and patrons,
357
00:37:30,927 --> 00:37:33,487
Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier.
358
00:37:36,007 --> 00:37:38,567
She survived the guillotine,
359
00:37:39,167 --> 00:37:40,805
he didn't.
360
00:37:50,407 --> 00:37:55,879
For Marat and Robespierre, there could
never be enough guillotined heads to feel safe.
361
00:37:56,887 --> 00:38:01,039
In 1789, Marat had called for a few hundred.
362
00:38:01,127 --> 00:38:04,597
Now, he called for hundreds of thousands.
363
00:38:14,727 --> 00:38:19,323
Someone had to stop it,
and that someone was Charlotte Corday,
364
00:38:19,447 --> 00:38:23,076
25 years old, from the town of Caen in Normandy.
365
00:38:24,527 --> 00:38:27,678
No royalist. A revolutionary, in fact.
366
00:38:28,247 --> 00:38:31,523
But a bitter enemy of Marat and his followers.
367
00:38:33,487 --> 00:38:38,641
The dictatorship, she thought,
had made a mockery of the Republic of Liberty.
368
00:38:42,087 --> 00:38:47,764
She cast herself as a tragic heroine
whose destiny was to save her country.
369
00:38:51,247 --> 00:38:57,880
On the 9th July, 1793,
Charlotte Corday got on a coach bound for Paris.
370
00:39:03,647 --> 00:39:07,322
When she arrived,
she came here to the Palais Royale,
371
00:39:07,407 --> 00:39:11,923
bought a black hat with green feathers
and a six-inch knife.
372
00:39:16,807 --> 00:39:19,560
In a cheap hotel room, she wrote a speech
373
00:39:19,647 --> 00:39:24,038
explaining why she had to kill Marat
and sewed it to her dress,
374
00:39:24,127 --> 00:39:27,005
along with her certificate of baptism.
375
00:39:35,567 --> 00:39:38,206
And as Corday was planning the murder,
376
00:39:38,287 --> 00:39:41,723
David was paying his friend Marat a visit.
377
00:39:42,327 --> 00:39:44,841
He found him propped up in his bath,
378
00:39:44,927 --> 00:39:49,523
using an upturned wooden box
as an improvised desk.
379
00:39:51,167 --> 00:39:55,683
So little time, so many traitors to denounce.
380
00:39:59,247 --> 00:40:03,399
Did the Friend of the People
ever rest from his patriotic toil?
381
00:40:07,727 --> 00:40:13,165
The next day, Charlotte Corday walked over
to Marat's house on the rue des Cordeliers.
382
00:40:13,247 --> 00:40:18,958
Barred at the door, she tried delivering
a handwritten note warning him about plots,
383
00:40:19,047 --> 00:40:23,245
hoping he was gonna rise to the bait. No reply.
384
00:40:26,767 --> 00:40:29,520
That evening, she tried again.
385
00:40:30,287 --> 00:40:35,077
As she arrived, two men were delivering
bread and newspapers.
386
00:40:36,167 --> 00:40:38,078
She was in.
387
00:40:41,087 --> 00:40:46,559
Corday pretended she was an informer
and gave Marat a list of traitors.
388
00:40:48,127 --> 00:40:51,483
''I will have them guillotined in a week'', he said.
389
00:40:54,527 --> 00:40:56,358
And that was it.
390
00:40:57,167 --> 00:41:01,922
Out came the knife, straight into Marat's chest.
391
00:41:11,847 --> 00:41:16,204
So the Friend of the People
was lost to the Revolution.
392
00:41:16,767 --> 00:41:21,921
Inside the National Convention,
grief-stricken deputies cried their eyes out,
393
00:41:22,007 --> 00:41:23,918
authentically or not.
394
00:41:24,487 --> 00:41:28,878
What they most wanted, I think,
was for Marat to come back to them.
395
00:41:28,967 --> 00:41:33,722
''Come back, come back.
We need you, all of France needs you.''
396
00:41:34,327 --> 00:41:40,516
And then one of the most theatrical deputies
rose to his feet and shouted,
397
00:41:40,647 --> 00:41:45,198
''David, where are you?
There is one more job for you.''
398
00:41:49,727 --> 00:41:54,562
And David of the swollen cheek
miraculously found his voice.
399
00:41:55,087 --> 00:41:56,202
I shall do it.
400
00:41:56,287 --> 00:41:57,925
''I shall do it, ''he said.
401
00:42:00,087 --> 00:42:02,282
''I will paint Marat. ''
402
00:42:17,727 --> 00:42:21,515
It was midsummer,
the hottest in anyone's memory.
403
00:42:24,767 --> 00:42:29,238
The embalmers, under David's direction,
were working overtime,
404
00:42:29,327 --> 00:42:32,160
preparing Marat's body for the funeral.
405
00:42:33,447 --> 00:42:38,282
But his normally ghastly red-flesh colour
was rapidly turning green.
406
00:42:43,247 --> 00:42:49,277
David had wanted Marat displayed sitting upright,
working for the good of the people.
407
00:42:49,967 --> 00:42:53,721
But the decomposing corpse
refused to co-operate.
408
00:42:54,847 --> 00:43:01,320
Drenched in perfume, it had to be laid flat out
for the grieving public to file past.
409
00:43:17,487 --> 00:43:21,526
The funeral would inevitably fade
in people's memory.
410
00:43:22,087 --> 00:43:24,885
The painting, though, would never fade.
411
00:43:30,967 --> 00:43:33,686
It was Marat's best revenge,
412
00:43:33,767 --> 00:43:37,840
for it would make sure
that he would always be around.
413
00:43:43,887 --> 00:43:50,520
Here was someone transfigured by goodness,
honesty and patriotic selflessness.
414
00:43:51,847 --> 00:43:57,638
''Look upon him,'' David is saying,
''And you will see the highest type of humanity.''
415
00:44:11,367 --> 00:44:13,597
He's cleaned Marat up, of course.
416
00:44:13,687 --> 00:44:17,282
The skin has the colour of cool stone,
417
00:44:18,607 --> 00:44:24,045
the wound is unmissable,
yet at the same time almost delicate,
418
00:44:24,127 --> 00:44:27,836
like the incision in the side of Christ on the cross.
419
00:44:31,447 --> 00:44:34,439
The white sheets seem shroud-like,
420
00:44:34,527 --> 00:44:40,523
ghostly wrappings of the great man
as he hovers between our world and posterity.
421
00:44:46,567 --> 00:44:49,320
It's a cult image,
422
00:44:49,407 --> 00:44:52,240
and it tells you to believe.
423
00:44:59,687 --> 00:45:05,080
Its genius lies in the fact
that it's also a story for the people.
424
00:45:05,167 --> 00:45:08,637
For once, the hero isn't Roman, he's one of them.
425
00:45:08,727 --> 00:45:12,083
It's the first great work for the faces in the crowd,
426
00:45:12,167 --> 00:45:14,601
the singers of the Marseillaise.
427
00:45:14,687 --> 00:45:20,159
You can almost feel David
imagining whole families in front of this painting,
428
00:45:20,247 --> 00:45:24,718
a father saying to his children,
''Look, there's his inkwell."
429
00:45:24,807 --> 00:45:31,121
''Look, there's the letter of the wicked Corday,
stained with the blood of the good Marat.''
430
00:45:35,527 --> 00:45:40,647
But David is not showing the letter
that got Corday into Marat's house,
431
00:45:40,727 --> 00:45:42,957
the one with the list of traitors.
432
00:45:43,367 --> 00:45:45,085
It's a different letter.
433
00:45:45,167 --> 00:45:49,445
One that would make Marat seem
like a victim of his own kindness.
434
00:45:51,087 --> 00:45:57,435
''It's enough that I am truly unhappy
to have the right to your benevolence, '' it says.
435
00:45:59,407 --> 00:46:05,642
On top of the box is another letter,
from the widow of a soldier fallen in battle.
436
00:46:05,727 --> 00:46:09,925
With it is a donation Marat is about to send her.
437
00:46:11,327 --> 00:46:15,479
Two women, then,
the good mother and the bad Corday.
438
00:46:18,727 --> 00:46:22,242
There's no attempt
to give a sense of Marat's room here.
439
00:46:22,367 --> 00:46:26,679
No crossed pistols hanging on the wall,
no fake columns.
440
00:46:27,727 --> 00:46:33,643
Instead, the entire top half of the painting
is filled with loose, feathery strokes
441
00:46:33,727 --> 00:46:37,845
that could be wall or just indeterminate space.
442
00:46:39,727 --> 00:46:41,877
The space of forever.
443
00:46:48,807 --> 00:46:52,800
But then that box, grainy, solid.
444
00:46:54,327 --> 00:46:59,765
''He was one of you, '' the box says.
''One of the poor and suffering.
445
00:47:03,007 --> 00:47:04,998
''But now you can't reach him.
446
00:47:05,087 --> 00:47:09,126
''No one can, except through this. ''
447
00:47:15,647 --> 00:47:18,286
But even while you're held spellbound,
448
00:47:18,367 --> 00:47:21,757
another voice inside your head says,
''Hold on a minute,"
449
00:47:21,847 --> 00:47:24,281
''this is the purest witchcraft.''
450
00:47:24,447 --> 00:47:28,963
What David has done here is to glorify a paranoid,
451
00:47:29,047 --> 00:47:33,484
whose greatest satisfaction
was the persecution of thousands of people
452
00:47:33,567 --> 00:47:38,482
whose only crime was to be lukewarm
about politics.
453
00:47:38,567 --> 00:47:41,639
This is an accomplice of terror.
454
00:48:01,247 --> 00:48:05,923
Of course, it never occurred to David
that he was betraying art.
455
00:48:06,007 --> 00:48:11,035
''Oh, no,'' he would have said.
''I'm fulfilling its highest, noblest purpose,"
456
00:48:11,607 --> 00:48:14,280
''that of moral re-education."
457
00:48:20,367 --> 00:48:24,485
''That's what all those altarpieces
that once hung in churches did,"
458
00:48:25,207 --> 00:48:29,598
''but those were all lies and fairytales."
459
00:48:33,327 --> 00:48:37,878
''We have a new church now,
the church of revolutionary virtue. ''
460
00:48:42,407 --> 00:48:45,001
So why do I like David?
461
00:48:45,087 --> 00:48:47,806
Well, I don't. He's a monster.
462
00:48:47,887 --> 00:48:51,436
But he makes ideas blaze in dry ice.
463
00:48:51,527 --> 00:48:55,839
He is a fantastic propagandist, no one better.
464
00:48:55,927 --> 00:48:59,840
Albert Speer could just as well roll over and die.
465
00:49:03,647 --> 00:49:05,797
And what was the point of it all?
466
00:49:05,887 --> 00:49:10,677
Well, it's a revenge on wit, on chat and on banter.
467
00:49:12,247 --> 00:49:14,078
But it was more than that.
468
00:49:14,167 --> 00:49:19,321
This is art designed
to make those who saw it virtuous citizens.
469
00:49:22,647 --> 00:49:29,280
And it's all so perfect, so tragic,
so poetic you almost believe it.
470
00:49:31,487 --> 00:49:35,526
But like a lot of art designed to improve humanity,
471
00:49:35,607 --> 00:49:37,882
it has the opposite effect.
472
00:49:40,527 --> 00:49:42,836
Because it's a lie.
473
00:50:00,767 --> 00:50:03,964
Three months after the assassination of Marat,
474
00:50:04,047 --> 00:50:09,758
on October 16th, 1793,
Marie Antoinette went to the guillotine.
475
00:50:11,087 --> 00:50:14,397
David saw her tumbrel going down the street,
476
00:50:14,527 --> 00:50:16,802
while people spat in their hands
477
00:50:16,887 --> 00:50:21,483
and tried to throw the gobs
on the woman who'd been queen.
478
00:50:22,327 --> 00:50:24,921
He sketched her impassively.
479
00:50:31,847 --> 00:50:37,319
But David's got more important things on his mind
than the fate of Marie Antoinette.
480
00:50:37,407 --> 00:50:41,798
He's now the official director
of revolutionary propaganda,
481
00:50:42,207 --> 00:50:45,882
to the exclusion of practically everything else.
482
00:50:48,087 --> 00:50:52,444
When his wife disapproved of his zeal,
he divorced her.
483
00:50:56,367 --> 00:51:01,919
David has become an enforcer,
sitting on the Committee for General Security,
484
00:51:02,007 --> 00:51:07,843
hunting down the treacherously half-hearted,
signing warrants for their execution.
485
00:51:24,087 --> 00:51:26,203
The terror had begun,
486
00:51:26,287 --> 00:51:30,724
and David had become part
of the great engine of killing.
487
00:51:34,127 --> 00:51:37,881
And as the tempo of the guillotine got faster,
488
00:51:38,247 --> 00:51:44,482
David busied himself with ever more
extravagant spectacles to educate the people.
489
00:51:46,247 --> 00:51:52,516
Casts of thousands, massed singing virgins,
statues on the site of the Bastille.
490
00:51:53,687 --> 00:51:57,123
A festival of the supreme being,
491
00:51:57,207 --> 00:52:02,281
starring the high priest of the Revolution,
Maximilien Robespierre.
492
00:52:06,247 --> 00:52:10,206
In the end, David was a victim of his own success.
493
00:52:10,287 --> 00:52:14,997
The hard-nosed men who were running the war
knew that bread and guns mattered,
494
00:52:15,087 --> 00:52:17,601
and virgins and doves didn't.
495
00:52:17,687 --> 00:52:22,317
So David wasn't just a distraction,
he was a menace. Get rid of him.
496
00:52:25,927 --> 00:52:31,399
And David's downfall
was inextricably linked to the fate of Robespierre.
497
00:52:32,367 --> 00:52:35,086
Increasingly, Robespierre was spoken of
498
00:52:35,167 --> 00:52:39,445
not as saviour of the Revolution, but tyrant,
499
00:52:39,527 --> 00:52:45,159
and David, the window-dresser of his tyranny,
was going down with him.
500
00:52:46,487 --> 00:52:52,960
Robespierre was attacked in the Convention,
the dreaded words ''outside the law'' uttered.
501
00:52:55,087 --> 00:52:59,239
Incredulous, David made a spectacle of himself.
502
00:52:59,327 --> 00:53:01,238
''Robespierre,'' he shouted.
503
00:53:01,327 --> 00:53:05,036
''If you drink the hemlock, I will drink it with you. ''
504
00:53:08,327 --> 00:53:10,204
But of course, he didn't.
505
00:53:10,727 --> 00:53:17,200
The next day, David was suddenly indisposed,
so he missed his own date with martyrdom.
506
00:53:17,287 --> 00:53:20,836
He was not there beside Robespierre
when he was guillotined
507
00:53:20,927 --> 00:53:24,283
and the blade at last came down on the terror.
508
00:53:24,767 --> 00:53:27,645
But they came for David, nonetheless.
509
00:53:31,847 --> 00:53:37,399
Vilified as tyrant of the arts,
David tried to stammer a defence.
510
00:53:38,167 --> 00:53:43,764
No one could understand what he was saying,
but they noticed how pale he was,
511
00:53:44,887 --> 00:53:49,756
how the sweat ran through his clothes
and dripped onto the floor.
512
00:53:54,967 --> 00:54:00,644
In prison, he managed to get hold of some paints
and he painted this self-portrait.
513
00:54:02,167 --> 00:54:07,560
You can see the famous tumour
and the twist it gives to his face,
514
00:54:07,647 --> 00:54:10,605
but that's as far as the truth goes.
515
00:54:11,407 --> 00:54:16,083
Because what we're seeing
is not the old propaganda master, that's for sure,
516
00:54:16,327 --> 00:54:20,115
but young David, 20 years at least taken off,
517
00:54:20,967 --> 00:54:24,926
all innocent, hair romantically dishevelled,
518
00:54:25,487 --> 00:54:30,561
coat open to expose his pure, transparent heart.
519
00:54:32,247 --> 00:54:35,876
And he's done himself with palette and brushes.
520
00:54:36,767 --> 00:54:38,678
''Why me?'' it says.
521
00:54:38,767 --> 00:54:40,439
''I'm just a painter. ''
522
00:54:47,007 --> 00:54:48,963
Yeah, right.
523
00:54:49,047 --> 00:54:52,562
Led astray, were you? Just doing your job?
524
00:54:52,647 --> 00:54:54,524
I don't think so.
525
00:54:59,487 --> 00:55:03,480
But guess what? The art plea worked.
526
00:55:04,087 --> 00:55:05,839
David got out of prison,
527
00:55:05,927 --> 00:55:12,321
and spent the next years doing spectacular,
uncontroversial portraits like this.
528
00:55:13,327 --> 00:55:16,444
Monsieur Seriziat, his brother-in-law.
529
00:55:18,007 --> 00:55:22,398
This is what the Revolution of the virtuous
had become,
530
00:55:22,887 --> 00:55:27,563
the Republican tricolour
reduced to a fashion accessory.
531
00:55:29,447 --> 00:55:33,599
When he does do history paintings,
they're pleas to stop killing.
532
00:55:34,887 --> 00:55:39,483
No more politics, then,
for Jacques-Louis David, right?
533
00:55:48,287 --> 00:55:49,879
Wrong.
534
00:55:49,967 --> 00:55:52,765
The old demon never really goes away.
535
00:55:53,927 --> 00:55:57,237
Once bitten by power, you stay bitten.
536
00:55:57,727 --> 00:56:03,882
He airbrushed Marat,
why shouldn't he airbrush Napoleon?
537
00:56:14,087 --> 00:56:18,126
When Napoleon was crowned emperor in 1805,
538
00:56:18,207 --> 00:56:23,156
David was slavishly at his side, official glamoriser.
539
00:56:25,167 --> 00:56:29,843
But then, of course, Napoleon was defeated,
the monarchy restored.
540
00:56:31,407 --> 00:56:34,160
Lots of Napoleon-lovers were forgiven,
541
00:56:36,567 --> 00:56:38,364
but not David.
542
00:56:41,847 --> 00:56:45,396
He'd done something that could never be forgiven.
543
00:56:47,767 --> 00:56:50,201
He'd done this,
544
00:56:50,287 --> 00:56:54,121
the most notorious image produced by the terror.
545
00:56:59,687 --> 00:57:03,600
France had had enough of Jacques-Louis David.
546
00:57:09,407 --> 00:57:14,083
Banished from his own country,
David ended up here in Brussels,
547
00:57:14,167 --> 00:57:18,877
where he did paintings
of increasingly high-gloss weirdness,
548
00:57:18,967 --> 00:57:22,118
a big fish in a very small pond.
549
00:57:23,007 --> 00:57:26,886
In France, they mostly talked about him
as a back number,
550
00:57:26,967 --> 00:57:30,676
''Oh, David, Brutus and all that. Isn't he dead?''
551
00:57:33,807 --> 00:57:37,197
When he did die, in December, 1825,
552
00:57:37,287 --> 00:57:42,645
the government in Paris refused permission
for his family to bring the body home.
553
00:57:43,607 --> 00:57:45,916
No king-killers allowed.
554
00:57:49,767 --> 00:57:53,601
David's paintings, though, were up for sale.
555
00:57:53,687 --> 00:58:00,081
Before that, they were put on public display.
Not, however, the notorious Marat.
556
00:58:01,887 --> 00:58:05,721
That was kept under guard
at the artist's son's house.
557
00:58:06,207 --> 00:58:09,199
Admission by private arrangement.
558
00:58:12,607 --> 00:58:15,997
And you take a look at it and you know why.
559
00:58:16,887 --> 00:58:21,756
If ever there was a work of art
that says that beauty can be lethal,
560
00:58:22,407 --> 00:58:26,036
it's Jacques-Louis David's Death of Marat.
51817
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