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Lot Essay
Monvoisin's painting depicts one of the crucial events of the French Revolution, the arrest of Robespierre. Lawyer, Jacobin and radical conventionnaire, Maximilien-Franois-Marie-Isidore de Robespierre left his mark on the history of France as president of the sinister Committee of Public Safety and de facto architect of the Terror. Between the autumn of 1793 and the spring of 1794, he suceeded in muzzling the Convention, co-opting the revolutionary Clubs and destroying any local autonomy by consolidating power in the directorship of the Committee of Public Safety.
His fall came on 9 Thermidor an II (27 July 1794). In the atmosphere of paranoic suspicions which the Great Terror had produced, members of the Convention and the committees feared for their own safety. An anti-Robespierrist coalition fell into place. On 9 Thermidor, Tallien and Billaud-Varenne denounced Robespierre on the floor of the Convention. His arrest was called for and he, Couthon, Saint-Just and twenty others were jailed; Robespierre was removed to the Conciergerie and, several hours later, was executed in the Place de la Revolution. With his fall, the Public Safety was discredited and the Terror, for which he had been largely responsible, consumed itself.
Monvoisin's painting depicts the melee in the Convention at the moment of Robespierre's denunciation. It is the sketch for his most celebrated work, completed in 1837, and today known only from an old black and white photograph.
His fall came on 9 Thermidor an II (27 July 1794). In the atmosphere of paranoic suspicions which the Great Terror had produced, members of the Convention and the committees feared for their own safety. An anti-Robespierrist coalition fell into place. On 9 Thermidor, Tallien and Billaud-Varenne denounced Robespierre on the floor of the Convention. His arrest was called for and he, Couthon, Saint-Just and twenty others were jailed; Robespierre was removed to the Conciergerie and, several hours later, was executed in the Place de la Revolution. With his fall, the Public Safety was discredited and the Terror, for which he had been largely responsible, consumed itself.
Monvoisin's painting depicts the melee in the Convention at the moment of Robespierre's denunciation. It is the sketch for his most celebrated work, completed in 1837, and today known only from an old black and white photograph.