alanlapin wrote:
I don't know if that's a detail from a famous painting, but it is anachronistic.
It is actually a famous painting you moron! It's the
Oath of the Horatii by Jacques-Louis David.
The painting hangs in the Louvre. And no, you won't be surprised to learn that I wasn't visiting the Louvre, I recognised it in the sequence in Bernardo Bertolucci's film "The Dreamers" where they run through the Louvre (good idea, museums n art are boring!!). The scene is a homage to the scene in Jean-Luc Goddard's "Bande à part". Well, it's famous to Frog film lovers. Now ain't all that educashonal?
Well, really, I was just waiting for the next scene where the delicious Eva Green gets her kit off again. You filthy old bast-rd Bertolucci! More please!
As for the painting (who cares!? let's hear more about the naked Ms Green!), according to Wikipedia (so this could be entirely wrong):
Quote:
The painting depicts the Roman Horatii, who according to Titus Livius' Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City) were male triplets destined to wage war against the "Curiatii," who were also male triplets, in order to settle disputes between the Romans and the city of Alba Longa. As revolution in France loomed, paintings urging loyalty to the state rather than to clan or clergy abounded. Although it was painted nearly five years before the revolution in France, the Oath of the Horatii became one of the defining images of the time.
In the painting, the three brothers express their loyalty and solidarity with Rome before battle, wholly supported by their father. These are men willing to lay down their lives out of patriotic duty. In this patriarchal society, the steely men, with their resolute gaze and taut, outstretched limbs are citadels of republican patriotism. They are symbols of the highest virtues of the Republic, even as the tender-hearted women lay home weeping and mourning, content to wait.
The mothers and sisters are shown clothed in silken garments seemingly melting into tender expressions of sorrow. Their despair is partly explained by the fact that one sister was engaged to one of the Curiatii and another is a sister of the Curiatii, married to one of the Horatii. Upon defeat of the Curiatii, the remaining Horatius journeyed home to find his sister cursing Rome over the death of her fiancé. He killed her, horrified that Rome was being cursed. Originally David had intended to depict this episode, and a drawing survives showing the surviving Horatius raising his sword, with his sister lying dead. David later decided that this subject was too gruesome a way of sending the message of public duty overcoming private feeling, but his next major painting depicted a similar scene - Lucius Junius Brutus brooding as the bodies of his sons, whose executions for treason he had ordered, are returned home.
The painting shows the three brothers on the left, the Horatii father in the center and the sister/wives on the right. Starting from the left, the Horatii brothers, there are the three of them swearing upon (saluting) their swords as they take their oath. As members of a patriarchal society, the men show no sense of emotion. Even the father shows no emotions. He holds up three swords. On the right, there are three women weeping, one in the back and two up closer. The woman dressed in the white is a Horatii sister weeping for both her fiancée and her brother, as the one dressed in brown is a Curiatii sister who weeps for her husband and her brother. The woman in black in the back is holding two children of one of the Horatii husband and the Curiatii wife. The younger daughter hides her face in her nanny’s dress as the son refuses to have his eyes shielded.
To me, it looks more like the women on the right have read a description of the painting's theme, either that or they've been watching Big Brother.
Should make a great movie! 
