Having grown close to Robespierre during the French Revolution, Jacques-Louis David, as a member of the National Convention, voted to execute Louis XVI. Both an artist and a political figure at the time, David went on to immortalize revolutionary martyrs during the Reign of Terror—most famously his friend Jean-Paul Marat, who was assassinated in his bathtub in 1793. David’s political loyalties nearly brought him to the guillotine, but his fortunes changed when Napoleon Bonaparte, who fascinated him, appointed him First Painter to the Emperor. When the Bourbon Restoration arrived in 1815, however, David was exiled to Brussels, where he died in 1825, exactly 200 years ago. “This anniversary was certainly an opportunity,” Sébastien Allard, a curator at the Louvre, recently told ARTnews. “But more importantly our last David retrospective dates back to 1989 and was strongly tied to the bicentennial of the French Revolution. After 35 years, it is time for us to revisit his career in a new light.” The Louvre exhibition presents 100 works by David. —Jeanne Malle