This review of Hersilia’s Sisters: Jacques-Louis David, Women, and the Emergence of Civil Society in Post-Revolution France by Norman Bryson appears in the May 2024 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. The Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799) by Jacques-Louis David has always been a divisive picture. In 1824 it seemed ‘worthy’ but ‘boring’ to Stendhal, who found its figures ‘without…
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