Quem Matou Marat?
The assassination of revolutionary activist and Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat on 13 July 1793 was one of the most iconic moments of the French Revolution (1789-1799), immortalized in Jacques-Louis David's painting Death of Marat. Marat's killer, Charlotte Corday, believed that the only way to save the Revolution and prevent the excesses of the Reign of Terror was through his death.
Pb L lines MA-XRF map of Marat’s head (24 cm x 27 cm), scanned with a dwell time of 0.33 s/pixel and a step sizeof 1.0 mm. Distribution image is corresponding to the number of counts in the corresponding X-ray lines of the element.
Supplementary Information
P-A Tardieu after David’s Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau sur son lit de mort (Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau on his deathbed), fragment of engraving, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des estampes et de la photographie.
The murder failed to prevent the Terror, instead giving the Jacobins a martyr who they could use to advance their agenda. Following her execution four days after the assassination, Corday also became a symbolic figure for those who resisted the Jacobin regime. In the decades since the event, it has become mythicized through the various poetry, art, and literature made about it.
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Marat's dying scream was heard by his neighbors who now rushed in to help. One man, Laurent Bas, who distributed Marat's newspaper, hurled a chair at Corday before tackling her and pinning her to the ground. Two of the neighbors, a dentist and a surgeon, lifted the body from the tub to try and staunch the bleeding. But it was too late. The Friend of the People was already dead.
Pb L MA-XRF map of Marat’s left hand (28cm x 17cm), scanned with a dwell time of 0.25 s/pixel and a step size of0.5 mm. Distribution image is corresponding to the number of counts in the corresponding X-ray lines of the element.
Popular songs were written in the name of the 'patriot Marat', as his bust replaced a statue of the Virgin Mary on the rue aux Ours. For a time, the port city of Le Havre even changed its name to Le Havre-de-Marat, and when the Jacobins eventually established their own Cult of the Supreme Being to replace Christianity, Marat was made a quasi-saint. His remains were interred in the French Panthéon in 1794, and the Jacobins used his martyrdom to push through their own agenda. As historian Simon Schama points out, the unpredictable, chaotic Marat was more use to them in death than in life.
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The use of the squaring up method for the Marat painting was first established by Sheldon in 2000 through photographs of low resolution infrared reflectograms of a few details. Nevertheless, the identity of a modello used in this process remains unknown.
Charlotte Corday was born in Saint-Saturnin, Normandy on 27 July 1768. At 13 years old, she was sent to live in a convent in Caen following the death of her mother. There, she would become enraptured by the works of philosophers of the French Enlightenment such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. By the start of the Revolution, she was an avowed republican, despite the aristocratic background of her family.
Convention Hall. New Convention Hall at the Tuileries, formerly Machines Hall, on May 20 1795. Illustration for Paris à travers les Ages (Firmin-Didot, 1875), engraving.
CIÊNCIA
O heart of Jesus, O heart of Marat…their Jesus was but a false prophet, but Marat is a god. Long live the heart of Marat…Like Jesus, Marat detested nobles, priests, the rich, the scoundrels. Like Jesus, he led a poor and frugal life… (Schama, 744).
The Jacobin leadership, convinced of a grand Girondist plot, had Corday cross-examined by the Revolutionary Tribunal three times over the next four days. Each time, Corday proudly insisted she had acted alone. When asked why she had killed Marat, Corday answered, "I knew that he was perverting France. I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand... I was a republican well before the Revolution, and I have never lacked for energy" (Andress, 189). She remained unrepentant, believing she had done France a patriotic service. On 17 July, Corday was executed by guillotine, only ten days before her 25th birthday.
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It is difficult to quantify the exact impact Marat had on the Revolution, seeing as he rarely took active participation in events, preferring instead to write about them before or after their occurrences. Certainly, he took pleasure in unmasking the Revolution's enemies, priding himself on his predictions of Lafayette's treason or Mirabeau's corruption. He also advocated for political violence as a means to an end, famously stating that "six hundred well-chosen heads" would deliver liberty to France. He often spoke of the need to purge certain individuals for the greater good and would routinely call for violence against "counter-revolutionary" figures.
The MA-XRF (Figs. 3 and 4 and Additional file 1: Fig. S1 and Additional file 2: Fig. S2) and RS methods made it possible to visualize the distribution of the inorganic pigments David used to portray Marat. The palette used by David is typical of the end of the 18th century and comparable to the one determined by Centeno, Mahon et al. [12]. Indeed, the different pigments identified through analytical methods have in common that they were used by most painters of the time.
Though, the examination under microscope of the painting surface has demonstrated the absence of white paint residues within the brushstrokes. The overpainting of the picture by means of ceruse or any other paint can be therefore excluded. In contrast, one can observe under microscope the presence of fabric fibers enclosed in the varnish layer all over the surface of the painting (Fig. 12). The varnish layer enclosing the fabric fibers should be dated 1826 [27]. The observed fibers, which do not seem originating from the cleaning, suggest that Marat has been possibly concealed beneath another canvas. Unfortunately, the identification of the fibers type would require sampling, which has not been done in the framework of this study.
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Concerning the report grid of the Marat, it must be noted the first column of squares on the left side has been truncated as regards width (ca. 9 cm). This indicates cutting the left edge could have shrunk the painting. The sacrificed canvas strip could look like the David’s workshop copy made in 1794 and kept at the Château de Versailles.
News of the attack traveled quickly, and within the hour a large crowd had gathered outside Marat's apartments. Six deputies from the National Convention arrived to interrogate Corday, who had made no attempts to escape or resist arrest. She answered every question put before her, claiming she had come to Paris with the sole intention of killing Marat, and that she had done so of her own volition, aided and abetted by no outside parties.