Jacques-Louis David was the dominant painter of the French Neoclassical movement and the most politically engaged artist of the Revolutionary era. His severe, morally charged paintings of classical antiquity — Oath of the Horatii (1784), Death of Socrates (1787) — were read as calls to Republican virtue on the eve of the Revolution. He became the official painter of the Revolution and later of Napoleon, producing grand propaganda canvases including The Coronation of Napoleon. After Waterloo he was exiled to Brussels, where he died.
