Damiens diende in het leger, was bediende en had verschillende andere baantjes. Hij was een goedgelovige en beïnvloedbare man die zich vaak ophield in kringen van het Parlement van Parijs, een rechtbank die in verschillende conflicten had met Lodewijk XV gewikkeld was, en waar opruiende taal tegen de koning gebruikt werd. Op 5 januari 1757 bracht de koning een bezoek aan een van zijn dochters in het kasteel van Versailles. Toen hij in zijn koets wilde stappen kwam Damiens naar voren en stak de koning met een mes, waarbij slechts een oppervlakkige wond ontstond. Damiens werd onmiddellijk gearresteerd. De koning zélf vond de zaak nauwelijks de moeite waard, maar het proces werd voor het Parlement van Parijs gebracht, dat geen moeite spaarde om te verdoezelen dat de eigen magistraten door hun opruiende taal zélf de inspirators tot de moordpoging waren geweest. De morele schuld werd uiteindelijk op perfide wijze bij de Jezuïeten gelegd. Vanwege van deze poging tot koningsmoord (regicide) werd hij op 26 maart 1757 veroordeeld tot de dood door middel van vierendeling. Bij de aankondiging van de straf antwoordde Damiens met de woorden “La journée sera rude” (vertaling: ‘t wordt een zware dag). De terechtstelling vond twee dagen later plaats op het Place de Grève voor het stadhuis van Parijs, en werd bijgewoond door onder andere Casanova.
 
Bron: nl.wikipedia.org

Calas, along with his wife, was a Protestant. France was then a mostly Catholic country; Catholicism was the state religion. While the harsh oppression of Protestantism initiated by King Louis XIV had largely receded, Protestants were, at best, tolerated. Louis, one of the Calas’ sons, converted to Catholicism in 1756. On October 13-October 14, 1761, another of the Calas’ sons, Marc-Antoine, was found dead on the ground floor of the family’s home. Rumors had it that Jean Calas had killed his son because he, too, intended to convert to Catholicism. The family, interrogated, first claimed that Marc-Antoine had been killed by a murderer. Then they declared that they had found Marc-Antoine dead, hanged; since suicide was then considered a heinous crime against oneself, and the dead bodies of suicides were defiled, they had arranged for their son’s suicide to look like a murder. On March 9, 1762, the parlement (appellate court) of Toulouse sentenced Jean Calas to death on the wheel. On March 10, at the age of 64, he died tortured on the wheel, while still very firmly claiming his innocence. Voltaire, contacted about the case, after initial suspicions that Calas was guilty of anti-Catholic fanaticism had subsided, began a campaign to get Calas‘ sentence overturned.
 
Bron: en.wikipedia.org

The exhibition Crime and Punishment looks at a period of some two hundred years: from 1791, when Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau called for the abolition of the death penalty, to 30 September 1981, the date the bill was passed to abolish it in France. Throughout these years, literature created many criminal characters. The title of the exhibition is itself taken from a work by Dostoyevsky. In the press, particularly the illustrated daily newspapers, the powerful fantasy of violent crime was greatly increased through novels.
 
At the same time, the criminal theme came into the visual arts. In the work of the greatest painters, Goya, Géricault, Picasso and Magritte, images of crime or capital punishment resulted in the most striking works. The cinema too was not slow to assimilate the equivocal charms of extreme violence, transformed by its representation into something pleasurable, perhaps even into sensual pleasure.
 
It was at the end of the 19th century that a new theory appeared purporting to establish a scientific approach to the criminal mind. This tried to demonstrate that the character traits claimed to be found in all criminals, could also be found in their physiological features. Theories like these had a great influence on painting, sculpture and photography. Finally, the violence of the crime was answered by the violence of the punishment: how can we forget the ever-present themes of the gibbet, the garrotte, the guillotine and the electric chair?
 
Beyond crime, there is still the perpetual problem of Evil, and beyond social circumstances, metaphysical anxiety. Art brings a spectacular answer to these questions. The aesthetic of violence and the violence of the aesthetic – this exhibition aims to bring them together through music, literature and a wide range of images.
 
Bron: musee-orsay.fr