Charlotte Corday (1860)

Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry: Charlotte Corday

 

This very famous painting depicts Charlotte Corday after her murder of Jean-Paul Marat, one of the most radical leaders in the French Revolution.

The death of Marat was first depicted artistically by Jacques-Louis David in 1793 (below). Among later works, the Charlotte Corday by Paul Jacques Aimé Baudry, painted in 1860, during the Second Empire, when Marat's "dark legend" (the angry monster insatiably hungry for blood) was widely spread among educated people, depicts Charlotte Corday as a true heroine of France, a model of virtue for the younger generations. [Wikipedia]

Jacques-Louis David: The Death of Marat (1793)