The Death of Socrates

This is the first image you see when you come to the Socratic Project. I include this piece of art, because after having it broken down and explained to me, it left a lasting impression. Not only this, but it changed my opinion about art like this. It made art interesting knowing the story which it is trying to tell. So, I thought I would try my best to explore the story within the art.

 “The Death of Socrates” by Jacques-Louis David is a neoclassical painting from the year 1787. It was a very early painting in the neoclassical style.

Neo: meaning new, recent, revived, and classical: from classics (Roman and Greek). It is therefore a new painting in the style of Roman and Greek Art. OK, but what does this mean?

It means it idealizes anatomy, shape, and musculature. It can also mean it can be read like a frieze (the long piece of stone carving that goes around a building) of the classical period. I will look at both aspects.

 In the painting we see Socrates as a muscular and strong looking figure, dressed in white. A rather idealized look for a 70-year-old, which speaks to his importance in the piece. He is also the one person in the image who creates angles with his body, it is stiff and strong. This could very well show the triumph of his principle, reason and intellect over passion and emotion. This is interesting as everyone else, including the executioner in red, is painted without straight lines, depicting their emotion and passion over what is happening. In other words, these features paint Socrates as the strong and reasoned one who is accepting death with honor.

 Now, if we read this image as we would a frieze, we can see two stories. Going from right to left, we see the flow of the anguished followers, curling and twisting, lead into the calm and strong Socrates, flowing down through his right arm to the hovering hand over the Hemlock. Then it flows through to the man giving the poison to Socrates, whose gaze lies not with Socrates but with the man sitting to the left. We can confidently assume the man to left here is Plato, Socrates’ student and the one who published everything we have about Socrates. I don’t think the executioners gaze ending on Plato is an accident here. It could be showing that it is through Plato, that most people know Socrates.

 Reading the scene from left to right, we can focus on Plato, and it seems that the scene is sort of exploding out of the back of his head. This could allude to the fact that all of this information we have of Socrates, does come from Plato’s teachings and writings about him.  Plato is depicted as withdrawn, potentially because he was not present at the death and old, which he would not have been at this time.

 There is even further allusion to Plato in this scene, where Socrates is seen pointing to the sky in the same way that Plato points to the sky in Raphael’s “School of Athens”. In many ways it is indistinguishable which philosophy is Plato’s and which is Socrates’ and so they could both be pointing to the same source of their knowledge here.

 This painting is a masterpiece. It truly did make appreciate the medium so much more and I hope this explanation helps make some sense of the image and give the painting some more kick.