Portraits of Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gobel (1727-1794), Bishop of Paris in 1792-93, and Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette (1763-1794), Procurator of the Commune in 1792, sketched on the way to the guillotine, April 12, 1794.
Medium
Black chalk
Dimensions
6 7/16 x 4 1/4 in. (16.4 x 10.8 cm.)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1962
Accession Number
62.119.8c
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the turbulent final days of the French Revolution's Reign Terror, Baron Dominique Viv Denon captured a haunting moment with this black chalk sketch. Dated April 12, 1794, it depicts the profiles of two condemned men en route to the guill: Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gobel, the revolutionary Bishop of Paris who had publicly renounced Catholicism in 3, and Pierre-Gaspard Chaette, the radical Procurator of the Paris Commune and fierce advocate for de-Christianization. Executed amid the Thermidorian Reaction against extremists, their fates underscored the Revolution's violent purges. Denon, a versati...
About the Artist
baron Dominique Vivant Denon · 1747–1825
Dominique Vivant, Baron Denon (1747–1825), was a multifaceted French artist, diplomat, and archaeologist whose life bridged the Ancien Régime, Revolution, and Napoleonic Empire. Born on January 4, 1747, in Givry near Chalon-sur-Saône to a family of minor nobility originally surnamed "de Non," he was sent to Paris at eighteen to study law. Instead, he pursued art, studying painting under Noël Hallé...