This painting shows the philosopher, unjustly condemned to die for his beliefs by the government, as a kind of pagan saint, statue-like and stoic in his beliefs and powerful and noble in the dark, stark anatomical shadings of the work. David's Death of Marat (1793) shows the French Revolutionary hero as a kind of political saint.

One interesting contrast between the rococo and the neoclassical is the period's differing depictions of women. In the rococo, the female was often central as an object of ornamental desire. Rococo celebrated femininity, the feminine form and a color palate that enhanced the delicacy of its subjects. Even its male rococo subjects were often highly feminized. When neoclassical works depicted women, in contrast, they tended to be idealized representations of freedom, as in the case of Marianne in the symbolic, bare-breasted depiction of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (1830). "It shows the allegorical figure...
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