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When a painting takes sides
Three large paintings offer different ways of shaping public events.
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Power presents itself
Jacques-Louis David, the French painter commissioned by Napoleon, completed The Coronation in 1807. It depicts the imperial ceremony held in 1804. The gathering and its gestures have been organised into a public image of power. Look for the action that holds the ceremony together.
A disaster becomes public
Théodore Géricault, a French painter, investigated the 1816 wreck of the Medusa before creating the painting exhibited in 1819. The crowded raft brings the survivors’ ordeal before an audience. Notice how your eye moves between bodies and the hope of rescue.
An uprising gains a symbol
Eugène Delacroix, another French painter, responded to the July Revolution of 1830 in Liberty Leading the People. The woman personifying Liberty makes an abstract idea visible among the fighters. The event belongs to 1830, separate from the Revolution of 1789.
Ask what the composition does
A real event and a carefully arranged image can belong together. Compare what each painting asks of you: admiration, concern, identification. Its arrangement is part of its argument.