Leonidas At Thermopylae
1814
Jacques-Louis David spent a whopping fifteen years obsessing over this chaotic battle scene before finally finishing the final version in 1814. You're looking at a preparatory sketch here, complete with a faint grid pattern the artist used to scale up his design for the massive canvas. At the center stands King Leonidas, looking surprisingly calm and majestic while surrounded by a frenzy of fighting soldiers and falling bodies. It's a perfect example of Neoclassicism, where even in the middle of a brutal last stand at Thermopylae, the heroes look like perfect Greek statues.
- Technique
- Graphite drawing with grid lines
- Material
- Paper
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