The Death of Socrates

Gallery 634 Jacques Louis David painted this in 1787, two years before the French Revolution, and it plays like a stage set: Socrates, sentenced to death, keeps lecturing as he reaches for the cup of hemlock while his followers fall apart around him. Every gesture is crisp and readable from across the room, which makes it a fast, satisfying stop. It is the route's best painting for an argument about principle versus survival.