Numa

Numa Pompilius, the legendary second king of Rome credited with establishing the religious institutions and peaceful governance that succeeded Romulus's martial foundation, was a favoured subject for French Neoclassical painters seeking royal models of wisdom and law. Blondel's 1828 canvas for the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Saint-Brieuc represents the lawgiver in the contemplative mode appropriate to a king celebrated for piety and reflection rather than conquest. The subject was politically pointed in 1828, just before the July Revolution of 1830: Numa as the peaceful, institution-building king offered an implicit contrast to rulers who governed through force. Blondel navigated the political context through historical distance — painting ancient Rome rather than contemporary France — while leaving the allegorical implication available to informed viewers.

As a paired work with Moïse from the same year in the same collection, the Numa canvas was likely conceived as part of a programme comparing ancient lawgivers across different civilisations. The compositional strategy — a single dominant figure in a classical setting — follows the convention for monumental figure painting in the academic tradition.