Arria and Paetus, 1784 (oil on canvas)

At the moment depicted in this painting, Arria reminds her husband Paetus that the honorable thing for a Roman prisoner to do is to commit suicide. In this obscure story, told in a letter by Pliny the Younger in the early second century, Paetus had joined a failed uprising against the emperor Claudius. He was punished with exile, then brought back to Rome and imprisoned. François-André Vincent has focused on the moment just before Arria demonstrated suicide by plunging a knife into her own breast. Looking straight at her husband, she gestures to her head, emphasizing that Paetus already knows what must be done.