(Paris 1748-1825 Brussels) Athena surrounded by Vestal virgins and attacked by warriors, a design for an antique frieze, pen and grey ink, on prepared transparent paper, 20,5 x 40,5 cm, mounted, framed, (Sch)

Jacques-Louis David was a collaborator of Joseph-Marie Vien (Montpellier 1716-1809 Paris) from 1766 onwards. In 1774 he was awarded the Prix de Rome for "Erasistratos Discovers the Cause of the Illness of Antiochus“; soon afterwards David left Paris for Rome with Vien and stayed there until 1780. His regular contributions to the Salon made him famous to a large audience; in 1783 he became a member of the Academie des Beaux-Arts.

In the following years he engaged in studying antiquity. He became friends with the archeologist Antoine Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849), studied the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) and visited the Herculaneum and Pompej. The present two drawings show strong similarities with several sheets from David’s „Twelve Roman albums“ which he made during his first two journeys to Rome in 1780.

They give evidence of David’s great interest in archeology and antiquity: the figures in the two friezes are variants of motifs on ancient Greek vases, which David had studied in the publication of Baron d'Hancarville‘s "Antiquités etrusques, grecques et romaines" (1766-1767).

Literature: Jean-Jacques Lévêque, Jacques-Louis David, ACR Edition, Paris 1989, p. 32 ff; Pierre Rosenberg/ Louis-Antoine Prat, Jacques-Louis David, 1748-1825: Catalogue raisonné des dessins, Leonardo Arte, Milan 2002, p. 583, sheet 21, No. 817: "Apollo and Ariadne surrounded by satyrs and maenads“.