A Comparison Of Oath Of The Horatii And The Third Of May
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“Oath of the Horatii” and “The Third of May” are two very unique pieces of art. Both represent the genre of art history, which was the highest academic genre from that time period. Most of these paintings are extremely large in stature and represents ancient history or contemporary history. All of the events depicted are idealized or fictionalized, they are not supposed to be real life actual representations of what happened. Both of these two pieces show this very well.
The subject in both is the major difference in the two, which is their interpretation of death. The “Oath of Horatii” shows death as a self-sacrifice for a higher cause. Death is the most courageous thing a person could do for their country and give their life for. This is the actual subject matter of the whole painting. The story the painting is showing, is the one of the three brothers of the Horatii family. The Horatii family was having major disputes with a neighboring country, and were on the brink of war. But instead of going to war, it was decided that to save thousands of lives, the three sons of the king would have a battle to the death, with…show more content… Davis shows off the neoclassical style, and Goya the romantic style. The neoclassical style was inspired by Classical Art in the 1600s and the Renaissance. The composition of paintings were very symmetrical, along with idealized figures. Most of the figures in the paintings were based off of classical models of ancient Rome. The technique used was very precise brush strokes, the strokes so well done that you cannot even tell that there were any. This makes the figure of the characters look very realistic and accurate to real life. Lighting was done in a way to make it not dramatic at all. There are very dark areas of the painting, but it doesn’t create a dramatic scene. Figures in the painting were very sculptural like, excellent bodies, muscles bulging, and the perfect male