#71 The Death of Socrates — Mug

Socrates has been condemned to drink hemlock and is still teaching. He reaches for the cup without looking at it, one finger raised, mid-sentence, while the man holding the poison turns away and cannot watch. His students are falling apart around him and he is the only calm figure in the room. David painted it two years before the French Revolution, and everyone who saw it understood it as a picture about dying for a principle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.