Editing Jacques-Louis David (section)

==Early life==
[[File:VienDavid.jpg|thumb|left|Portrait of David as a youth, {{c.|1765}}, by his tutor [[Joseph-Marie Vien]]]]
Jacques-Louis David was born into a prosperous [[French people|French]] family in Paris on 30 August 1748. When he was about nine his father was killed in a [[duel]] and his mother left him with his well-off architect uncles. They saw to it that he received an excellent education at the [[Collège des Quatre-Nations]], [[University of Paris]], but he was never a good student—he had a facial tumor that impeded his speech, and he was always preoccupied with drawing. He covered his notebooks with drawings, and he once said, "I was always hiding behind the instructor's chair, drawing for the duration of the class". Soon, he desired to be a painter, but his uncles and mother wanted him to be an architect. He overcame the opposition, and went to learn from [[François Boucher]] (1703–1770), the leading painter of the time, who was also a distant relative. Boucher was a [[Rococo]] painter, but tastes were changing, and the fashion for Rococo was giving way to a more classical style. Boucher decided that instead of taking over David's tutelage, he would send David to his friend, [[Joseph-Marie Vien]] (1716–1809), a painter who embraced the classical reaction to Rococo. There, David attended the [[Académie de peinture et de sculpture|Royal Academy]], based in what is now the [[Louvre]].
[[File:Mademoiselle Guimard as Terpsichore, by Jacques-Louis David.jpg|thumbnail|upright|''Mademoiselle Guimard as Terpsichore'', 1774–1775, an early work]]
Each year the academy awarded an outstanding student the prestigious {{Lang|fr|[[Prix de Rome]]|italic=no}}, which funded a 3- to 5-year stay in Rome. Since artists were now revisiting classical styles, the trip provided its winners the opportunity to study the remains of classical antiquity and the works of the Italian Renaissance masters at first hand. Called ''pensionnaire'' they were housed in the French Academy's Rome outpost, which from the years 1737 to 1793 was the Palazzo Mancini in the Via del Corso. David made three consecutive attempts to win the annual prize, (with ''[[Minerva Fighting Mars]]'', ''[[Diana and Apollo Killing Niobe's Children]]'' and ''[[The Death of Seneca (David)|The Death of Seneca]]'') with each failure allegedly contributing to his lifelong grudge against the institution. After his second loss in 1772, David went on a hunger strike, which lasted two and a half days before the faculty encouraged him to continue painting. Confident he now had the support and backing needed to win the prize, he resumed his studies with great zeal—only to fail to win the {{Lang|fr|Prix de Rome|italic=no}} again the following year. Finally, in 1774, David was awarded the {{Lang|fr|Prix de Rome|italic=no}} on the strength of his painting of ''[[Erasistratus Discovering the Cause of Antiochus' Disease]]'', a subject set by the judges. In October 1775 he made the journey to [[Italy]] with his mentor, Joseph-Marie Vien, who had just been appointed director of the [[French Academy in Rome|French Academy at Rome]].<ref name="Oxford"/>

While in Italy, David mostly studied the works of 17th-century masters such as [[Nicolas Poussin|Poussin]], [[Caravaggio]], and [[the Carracci]].<ref name="Oxford"/> Although he declared, "the Antique will not seduce me, it lacks animation, it does not move",<ref name="Oxford"/> David filled twelve sketchbooks with drawings that he and his studio used as model books for the rest of his life. He was introduced to the painter [[Raphael Mengs]] (1728–1779), who opposed the [[Rococo painting|Rococo]] tendency to sweeten and trivialize ancient subjects, advocating instead the rigorous study of classical sources and close adherence to ancient models. Mengs' principled, historicizing approach to the representation of classical subjects profoundly influenced David's pre-revolutionary painting, such as ''[[The Vestal Virgin (David)|The Vestal Virgin]]'', probably from the 1780s. Mengs also introduced David to the theoretical writings on ancient sculpture by [[Johann Joachim Winckelmann]] (1717–1768), the German scholar held to be the founder of modern art history.<ref>Alex Potts, ''Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).</ref> As part of the {{Lang|fr|Prix de Rome|italic=no}}, David toured the newly excavated ruins of [[Pompeii]] in 1779, which deepened his belief that the persistence of classical culture was an index of its eternal conceptual and formal power. During the trip David also assiduously studied the High Renaissance painters, [[Raphael]] making a profound and lasting impression on the young French artist.