The Beaux-Arts de Paris, formally the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, is a French grande école whose primary mission is to provide high-level fine arts education and training. The art school, which is part of the Paris Sciences et Lettres University, is located on two sites: Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, and Saint-Ouen.

Jacques-Louis David was a French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s, his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward classical austerity, severity, and heightened feeling, which harmonized with the moral climate of the final years of the Ancien Régime.