“The Robespierre of the brush” they called this Neoclassical master whose career, like the proverbial cat with nine lives, survived coup after bloody coup. A darling of the Royal Academy, he metamorphosed into France’s art-czar during the Reign of Terror. As a deputy in the National Convention, he voted for Louis XVI’s execution and consigned 300 others to the guillotine. His chef d’oeuvre, completed in 1793, has been called the “pietà of the Revolution.” With the fall of the Republic, the Jacobin artist transformed himself yet again, into court portraitist to Napoleon, producing a series of monumental tableaus on imperial themes. Exiled after Waterloo, the 77-year-old master died peacefully in Brussels in 1825.
Jacques-Louis David, "Death of Marat"
Source: USC.edu Trojan Family Tree