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The Death of Bara
Artist	Jacques Louis-David
Year	1794
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	118 cm × 155 cm (46.5 in x 61 in)
Location	Place du château, Vizille, Dept. of Isère, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes

The Death of Young Bara, Joseph Bara or The Death of Bara is an incomplete 1794 painting by the French artist Jacques-Louis David, now in the musée Calvet in Avignon. Joseph Bara, a young drummer in the army of the French First Republic, was killed by the Vendéens during the French revolution, his death becoming a symbol of the rebellion appointed by Robespierre himself. The painting exists in a series painted by David showing such heros and martyrs, aside The Death of Marat and The Last Moments of Michel Lepeletier – There is also an anonymous contemporary copy dating to 1794, now in the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille and exhibited at the Musée de la Révolution française.

Context

The winter of 1793-1794 was a trying time for French revolutionaries, as the complexities of the revolution began to multiply and Maximillian Robbespierre struggled to hold on to an organized power. However the death of a twelve-year-old Joseph Bara was interpreted to become a beacon of hope that offered the revolution a new sense of dedication and unification. Bara was too young to enlist, but was "burning to serve," according to General J.B. Desmarres wrote a report of his death that exposed the facts of Bara's death, and the way Bara sacrificed his life instead of turning over a pair of horses to brigands. Robespierre saw Bara's death as an opportunity to unite the French Revolutionaries and convinced his followers that Bara gave his life in reaction to brigands yelling "vive le roi," to which Bara allegedly responded "Vive le République" while perishing in a following spat. In his own personal recount of these events, Robespierre elevates the death of Bara to serve as a model of undying and almost blind support of the French Republic, of "glory, virtue and fatherhood."

Robespierre himself aimed to construct a depiction of this martyr, and enlisted the help of David with the intention that the painting would represent the "absolute virtue, simple and modest, as it is delivered from the hands of Nature", and be reproduced in schools to motivate school children according to Robespierre's political contemporary Bertrand Barere.

Content and Analysis

David challengingly takes on this portrayal of a relatively unknown boy and forms a narrative around the story that is radically dramatized in its circumstances of Bara's death. In accordance with the aestheticization of Robespierre's interpretation of this event, David grapples in portraying preconceived notions of Bara's death and the culmination of the French revolution.

David displays only the naked body of an androgynous figure lying horizontally, grasping a letter and a cockade, with the small silhouette of a flag on the far left. Bara's pose mimics that of Girodet's Endymion, as well as Bernini's Hermaphrodite, recalling both antiquity and the innovations of David's contemporaries.^[2] Besides this dying pose, the body stands mostly alone, the only signs of conflict making itself known of the far left. Lacking any gore, injury or blood, and the intact body of Bara proves its innocence through "its beauty without disruption."^[3]

David also capitalizes on the innocence of Bara through the suppression of Bara's masculinity and emphasis on his illuminated effeminate figure.^[2] The painting remains unfinished, but the attention to detail in the shading and musculature of the figure suggests Bara was meant to be nude. Bara's pose further emphasizes his curved hip's and elongated torso, as the figure's flowing hair, and absence of genitalia gives the Bara a sensitive innocence with which furthered the narrative of Bara's heroism and rebellious pride even as a soft, pale and almost feminine state. Thus David stated in a speech to the Convention, contrasting the youthful, innocent and feminine nature of Bara to "those effeminate sybarites [meaning young Englishmen] whose corrupted souls prevent them from having any virtue and whose idle arms carry only numbers and accounts, testimony to their adulterous affairs."

See also

• List of paintings by Jacques-Louis David

Bibliography

• La Mort de Bara, foundation du muséum Calvet, Avignon, 1989
• Roberts, Warren E. Jacques-Louis David, Revolutionary Artist : Art, Politics, and the French Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
• Sloane, Joseph Curtis. “David, Robespierre, and ‘The Death of Bara’ {with French Summary}.” Gazette Des Beaux Arts, September 1969, 143–60. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=asu& AN=513271775&site=ehost-live.