Leonidas at Thermopylae

Jacques Louis David

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is a compositional study for David's large canvas of the same subject, signed and dated 1814 and today in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. As his commissions for Napoleon dried up, David returned to a mythological painting he had begun planning fifteen years earlier as a pendant (pairing) to the Intervention of the Sabine Women. It depicts the legendary Spartan king Leonidas, who would perish with three hundred soldiers at Thermopylae, where they were vastly outnumbered by the Persian army of Xerxes. In this working drawing, the artist’s evolving ideas appear laid down in a rush, perhaps intermittently, progressing from a pale initial sketch to emphatic revisions in a darker shade. Many of the poses and figural types used by David refer to classical prototypes, as does the practice—debated during David's time—of depicting classical warriors nude.emingly oblivious to the tumult swirling around him, Leonidas maintains a statuesque stillness, lost in contemplation of his soldiers’ impending sacrifice.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art