A family caught in public duty

Let the size of the painting register before trying to follow the story. Brutus Condemning His Sons to Death stretches almost eight metres across. Guillaume Guillon-Lethière, a painter born in Guadeloupe, completed it in 1811. He gave an ancient Roman subject enough space to confront you on the scale of a room. The central conflict is painful and direct: a father must place public duty above his own sons. This Brutus belongs to an earlier Roman story than the man associated with Julius Caesar's assassination. As you look across the figures, consider how differently a public decision may be felt by each person caught up in it. Then allow your eyes to rise. Charles-Louis Muller, a nineteenth-century French painter, created a ceiling programme celebrating art through figures representing qualities such as Inspiration, Study and Observation. Winged figures separate its main compositions. The room asks you to use some of those same qualities: observe the scene, study its relationships and think about the choices an artist makes to give a story such force.