Murder in the Rue Marat

How an enigmatic masterpiece of the French Revolution became a talisman of the revolutionary spirit in our own time Jacques-Louis Davids The Death of Marat depicts the painters friend and fellow revolutionary, Jean-Paul Marat, collapsed in his bath after being fatally stabbed by a female assassin who stands just outside the frame. In this fascinating book, Thomas Crow traces the radical legacy of a painting that has been called the Piet of the French Revolution, showing how Davids masterpiece captures the saga of that violent era in the single figure of Marat, and how it reveals itself anew today. Crow begins by describing how the paintings enduring power came to the fore during the countercultural tumult of the 1960s, discussing how his vocation as a scholar arose out of his own encounter with the work. He then takes readers back to 1793, telling the story of the paintings creation through the eyes of David, his subject, and Marats charismatic assassin, Charlotte Corday. Charting the history of its impact across more than two centuries, Crow shows how this multilayered portrait surfaced in succeeding waves of political dissent as an enduring talisman of popular insurgency. Beautifully illustrated, Murder in the Rue Marat is an art historians disarmingly personal account of a painting whose hidden complexities bear witness to the promise and peril of revolution in Marats time and our own.