Exécution d'Olympe de Gouges

This illustration attributed to Mettais, titled “Execution of Olympe de Gouges,” depicts the execution of Olympe de Gouges during the French Revolution. The scene shows the guillotine erected outdoors while several figures witness the event in a restrained yet dramatic composition. The image refers to the death of the writer, playwright, and political pamphleteer Olympe de Gouges, who was guillotined in 1793 after defending political positions regarded as hostile to the dominant revolutionary power. Through its subject, the work belongs to the memorial iconography of the Reign of Terror and to the retrospective representation of major political and intellectual figures of the French Revolution.