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The Oath of the Tennis Court
Jacques Louis David French
Not on view
In this cinematic vision of patriotic fervor, David commemorates a foundational event of the French Revolution. On June 20, 1789, representatives of various social classes gathered on a tennis court at Versailles and, in a challenge to the absolute authority of the king, pledged to draft a constitution.
The storm raging outside suggests the chaotic state of the French nation, while the emphatic gestures of the participants read as a refracted echo of David’s 1785 painting The Oath of the Horatii, thus ennobling a contemporary event by recasting it in the language of the classical past. The drawing was intended as a study for a painting to hang in the newly formed National Assembly, to be funded by public subscription, but the fast pace of political change derailed these plans.
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