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The Death Of Socrates And An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump

Decent Essays
History painting is a visual genre that was first developed in the 1600s or seventeenth century. Many of the history paintings when first made referred to events from the Bible, mythology or history, like The Death of Socrates. As time passed, other paintings featured more recent events in history or recreations of history, like An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. The Death of Socrates is a painting from 1787 showing the death of Socrates as he is about to drink Hemlock. An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is a painting from 1768 showing an experiment on a bird in an air pump that takes away the oxygen in the chamber slowly. Both of these paintings are focused on death. Although The Death of Socrates and An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump are both history paintings involving the death of an individual with several people reacting to the death of that individual, there are different expressions displayed on the faces of the people in the paintings and a different impact of the death upon the people. In The Death of Socrates and An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, the paintings are very focused on the center of the images. The paintings are painting with more dark colors around the borders, but at the center of both images, the center figures seem highlighted, as they are the center of our attention. This is directing our sight from the side characters to the center figures, but if one looks more closely at the image, one can see that each individual has a
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