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| Jacques-Louis David, La Mort de Socrate (Death of Socrates) 1787 |
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| The cup of poison Hemlock |
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| Plato depicted as an old man |
Now located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, Jacques-Louis David’s masterpiece depicts the death of
Socrates as recounted in Plato’s Phaedo as his mentor had been charged with
corruption of the youth and sentenced to die by poison Hemlock. David signed
the work in two places: once under Crito, the distraught young philosopher apprentice
clutching his master’s thigh (signifying his identification with the subject) and once near Plato as a gesture of gratitude for
the Phaedo which had inspired his painting. Commissioned in 1786, the painting
served to symbolize defiance of corrupt authority, a foremost virtue in the
dawn of the French Revolution.
