Which Jacques-Louis David painting depicts the Roman consul Brutus receiving the bodies of his executed sons?
Answer
The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons
The Jacques-Louis David painting depicting Brutus receiving the bodies of his executed sons is The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons.
David completed the oil painting in 1789, the year the French Revolution began. It shows Lucius Junius Brutus, legendary founder of the Roman Republic, confronting the consequences of ordering the execution of his sons after they conspired to restore the monarchy.
The subject turned civic duty into a painful moral drama. Brutus sits apart in shadow while his wife and daughters react in anguish as the lictors return the bodies. The contrast between public virtue and private grief made the painting especially powerful in revolutionary France.
The scene is Neoclassical in both its antique subject and its controlled, monumental composition. It is often confused with David’s The Oath of the Horatii, which also presents Roman family members forced to subordinate personal feeling to duty. The Brutus painting is displayed in the Louvre.