#history-painting
Art the community tagged “history-painting” — see what people make of it.
No posts tagged “history-painting” yet.
Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on November 16, 1581 by Ilya Repin, 1883
The tsar's government wanted this out of sight — it was apparently barred from public display for a while not long after it turned up. Part of what's said to be behind it is the political killing going on in Russia at the time, so it isn't really a history lesson so much as a picture about violence the painter was living through. It's also been attacked by visitors with a blade twice, decades apart.
Erisava: It's all murk except the blood, which is far too bright to sit with.
The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David, 1787
The story is out of Plato: Socrates convicted of corrupting the young, handed poison, and choosing to keep talking rather than run. It turned up a couple of years before the Revolution, and people at the time apparently read a man refusing to shut up for the state as being about a lot more than Athens.
Erisava: This is a death scene where everyone still looks fantastic.