Charlotte Corday

This painting by Paul Baudry relates a historical event from the French Revolution: Charlotte Corday assassinating Jean-Paul Marat on the evening of July 13, 1793. The artist chose to illustrate the moment that followed the murder. As in a closed room, Baudry reduced the framing of the composition to immerse the spectator in the heart of the scene. Charlotte Corday, life-size, is frozen near the window, staring into space. Marat, on the other side, lies with his head back in his bathtub, the knife still planted in the chest. The bird's eye view and the foreshortening accentuate the dramatic side. Between the two characters, the objects testify to the brutality of the scene: overturned chair, loose papers and hat on the ground.

To reconstruct this scene, Baudry carefully studied the event reported in the press and in the texts of historian Jules Michelet: “She pulled the knife from under her kerchief and plunged it whole up to the handle in Marat's chest. "To me, my dear friend." At this cry, we run up and see Charlotte standing near the window, as if petrified.” The artist also represented items mentioned in the newspapers such as the books on the shelf and the chopping block on the bathtub. He also included an unexpected element, an old map of France that indicates the place and date of printing: 1792. The proposed division, however, does not correspond to this date. 

Baudry was inspired by two paintings: Assassinated Marat produced in 1793 by Jacques-Louis David, presented to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, and the Portrait of Charlotte Corday painted by Jean-Jacques Hauer in 1793 and kept at Versailles. One of them we will present tomorrow....  :)

Meanwhile, don't forget to check our DailyArt Prints, with amazing art history masterpieces printed in extraordinary quality!

P.S. Here you can see how other artists dealt with the subject of murder in art. Scary, isn't it?