Three Roman brothers swear to their father that they will win or die for Rome, their arms stretched toward the swords he holds out, while the women beside them weep. Jacques-Louis David painted it in Rome in 1784 and 1785 for King Louis XVI, five years before the Revolution, to show what duty to the state costs a family.
The cost is built into the story. The Horatii of Rome and the Curiatii of Alba Longa were cousins, and the young men of each family were married or engaged to the sisters of the other. Whoever won the duel, one of the women in the picture would lose a husband, a fiancé or a brother.
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The brothers never swore anything. Livy, the Roman historian who tells the story, has the two cities pick three brothers each and let them fight, and the oath is not in his account. The moment on the canvas, the father holding out the swords and the sons swearing, is David's own invention.
The picture also did not begin as a threat to the crown. The painting now read as the first image of the Revolution was ordered by the king, hung in his collection, and approved by his officials. I don't think David meant it as a call to revolt, and historians today call that reading unlikely.
Who paid for the Oath of the Horatii?
Louis XVI did. The order came through the comte d'Angiviller, who ran the Bâtiments du roi, the office in charge of the king's art. Angiviller had noticed David after his Belisarius at the Salon of 1781, and he was running a program to lift the state of French painting and to teach the public with examples of ancient virtue. The Louvre calls the Oath David's first royal commission.
David did not follow the format he had been given, and the picture was approved anyway. That tells us how little the king's officials saw in it to fear. A Roman father asking his sons to die for the state was a lesson any monarchy could sign. David had also cut the darkest part of Livy's story.
What You'll Discover
What David left out.
Who sits in the women's corner.
Why Rome saw it first.
When it became a Revolution picture.