Condemned to drink hemlock, Socrates sits upright on his prison bed and keeps teaching, one hand reaching for the cup, the other raised. Around him his pupils give way to grief; the young man passing the poison turns his face away. Drawing on Plato's Phaedo, David set the calm philosopher against his followers' anguish, and the picture triumphed at the Salon of 1787.
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David signed twice: his full name under Crito, who grips Socrates's thigh, and his initials under the aged Plato, slumped at the foot of the bed.
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