Brutus Condemning His Sons to Death

Lucius Junius Brutus orchestrated a revolt to overthrow the last king of Rome and establish the Roman Republic in 509 BCE. Never again, Brutus decreed, would one man rule over the Roman people. However, in an act of defiance the brothers of Brutus’s wife Vitellia, and Brutus’s sons, Titus Junius and Tiberius Junius, secretly plotted to restore the monarchy. Their machinations were discovered and the consuls sentenced the traitors to death. Brutus was ordered to witness his sons’ executions; his stoic acceptance of their gruesome murder and his devotion to the Republic over his family became the powerful moral of this bloody tale. This passage from Roman history was a preferred subject not only for Guillaume Lethière, but also his rival Jacques-Louis David. Lethière painted this work as a student at the Académie de France in Rome. It was later exhibited in Paris at the Salon of 1801. Upon exhibition, the painting was criticized for the grotesque nature of the severed head at left, which would have struck a chord in the collective imagination of the French public, who was well exposed to such gruesome acts as part of the French Revolution and its bloody guillotine.

Image Caption

Guillaume Lethière, Brutus Condemning His Sons to Death, 1788, Oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, Acquired by the Clark, 2018.1.1