Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
1743 - 1794
and his wife
Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze
1758-1836

Oil on Canvas by Jacques-Louis David
1748-1825

This oil painting is one of the greatest achievements by David as the 
champion of French Neo-classicism. Finished in 1788, this work can be 
seen at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Six years later, 
Lavoisier was guillotined along with 27 others. All the victims were 
categorized as "tax-collectors".

Lavoisier is one of the founders of modern chemistry and is considered 
to have discovered oxygen. He was an expert in gunpowder which made him 
a political figure.

His wife Marie-Anne was a talented art student with David. She  
illustrated the pioneering book "Traite Elementaire de Chimie" which  
stands as a monument to the history of Biochemistry and Natural Sciences
and demonstrates how "Arts and Sciences" are inextrincably linked. In it 
we find Lovoisier elaborating on the nature of words:

                     To call forth a CONCEPT 
                        A WORD is needed

                     To portray a PHENOMENON 
                       a Concept is needed

              All three mirror one and the same Reality

Killing of Lavoisier was a deed of a proletariat movement. 

Lovoisier and Corondelet are just a few who were "liquidated" in a quest 
of destruction. Since those days, Brutal, Barbarian and Vandal have
new comrades in Bolshevik and Commissar, each tainted by its history.