Marius at Minturnae

A Neoclassical painter and collector, whose bequest formed the foundation of the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, Fabre began his career in the studio of Jacques Louis David and continued his studies in Rome. Royalist sympathies led him to take up residence in Florence in 1793, where he remained for much of his career. This

aquatint illustrates an episode from Plutarch's Lives where the Roman general Marius fled Rome, after being exiled by his enemies in the Senate, only to be captured outside the town of Minturnae, where local authorities ordered him to be executed. Fabre depicts the confrontation between the imprisoned former general Marius and the Cimbrian soldier sent to execute him.


Although they were on opposite sides of the political divide during the revolutionary years, both Fabre and his former teacher were drawn to the theme of the noble prisoner.