Niobe, the queen of Thebes, shelters her youngest daughter from Apollo and Diana‘s arrows. The queen’s thirteen other children lie wounded or dead in the painting’s foreground. This violent scene, drawn from a 1st-century Roman poem, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, illustrates Niobe’s punishment for boasting of her own power and fertility and for refusing to pay homage to the mother of her attackers.

Jacques-Louis David completed this painting when he was only twenty-four years old as part of his second bid to win the Prix de Rome, the ultimate prize for students in the French Royal Academy. David was deeply disappointed when the work was not given the top honor, and he subsequently attempted to starve himself to death. Fortunately, a fellow artist persuaded him to return to his studies at the Academy, and David finally won the prize in 1774.

Excerpt from

Nicole R. Myers, DMA label copy, 2018.

• National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
  Read a biography of Jacques-Louis David.

• University of Virginia E-text
  Read book six of Ovid's Metamorphoses which includes the story of Niobe and her children.