Visions of Tragedy: Jean-Francois Ducis and Jacques-Louis David

This article explores the relationship between Jean-François Ducis and Jacques-Louis David, on the basis of unpublished manuscript material and in the context of the use, limits and possibilities of the tragic in the later decades of the eighteenth century in France. It argues that two projects, Ducis's Macbeth and David's Caracalla ideas, both taking shape from 1781­83, might usefully be compared in the context of Ducis's increasing interest in dramatic pictorialism, and David's fascination with, and use of, models and rhetoric derived from the tragic stage.