The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David

The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David

Still teaching

Socrates sits bare-chested on his bed in a stone cell, one hand raised to make a point and the other reaching, without a glance, for the cup of hemlock. The young man who hands it to him covers his eyes. Around him the disciples break down in different ways: Crito, seated at the right, grips his master’s thigh; others weep against the wall; at the foot of the bed an old man sits hunched and turned away. The shackles lie on the floor, and through the arch at the back his wife is seen leaving by the stairs.

Plato at the foot of the bed

The source is Plato’s “Phaedo”, which tells of Socrates’ last day in 399 BC, after he was condemned for impiety and corrupting the young of Athens. David takes one liberty: the old man at the foot of the bed is Plato, who was in fact young at the time and says he was not there. The picture was painted for Charles-Michel Trudaine de la Sablière and shown at the Salon of 1787. Its hard light, bare setting and figures laid out like a frieze made it a model of the new Neoclassical painting.

Where it hangs

It belongs to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which acquired it in 1931, and measures 129.5 by 196.2 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 4,000-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 26 inches on its longest side.

Sources: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Wikidata Q1752990 · Wikimedia Commons