Nude Soldiers Gesticulating with Their Weapons (recto); Two Drapery Studies for the Figure of Tatius (verso)
Jacques Louis David (French, 1748–1825)
1796/97
- Medium
- Black chalk and pen and black ink, with touches of white chalk (recto) and black chalk, with touches of red and white chalk (verso) on cream laid paper, pieced
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 40.9 × 55 cm (16 1/8 × 21 11/16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Adult profiles and older: its museum's description or title mentions nudity. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This large, bold drawing is a preparatory study for the painting The Intervention of the Sabine Women. In the legendary origin story of ancient Rome, the city’s founder Romulus and his men sought to establish families by abducting the neighboring Sabine women and forcing them to become their wives. When the vengeful Sabines declared war on the Romans, Romulus’s wife and the other Sabine women threw themselves and their infants between the two armies and successfully stopped a war.
The subject allowed Jacques-Louis David, who conceived of it while in prison for his activities during the French Revolution, to deliver a powerful postrevolutionary message of political and familial reconciliation.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
