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The paintings of Jacques Louis David carry the insignia of that austere and serious age which, now ignorantly identified with the flippancies of a decadent court, preceded and precipitated the French Revolution. Large somber canvases, they exclude flippancy and tell, with a dignified and almost Alexandrine rhythm, the most ennobling dramas of classical history--The Rape of the Sabines, Leonidas at Thermopylae, The Oath of the Horatii, Brutus, The Grief of Andromache and, most somber and perhaps imposing of all, the Death of Socrates--called, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, ''the greatest effort of art since the Sistine Chapel and the Stanze of Raphael."

Painted in 1787, twelve years after Artist David won the Prix de Rome, it relates, in the same mood of admiration, the story which was incorporated in perhaps the finest of Plato's dialogs--how Socrates, imprisoned after an unfair trial in which his sarcasm frightened but antagonized his judges, met death calmly, almost gaily. His illustration showed Socrates reaching for a cup of hemlock with one hand and pointing toward an ungracious sky with the other, while eight of his disciples, in attitudes of profound dejection, surrounded the couch on which he had composed himself for his final and most brilliant argument. A picture which, to an age which worshipped stoicism, had the emotional value of a Crucifixion, it achieved, like most of Painter David's works, immense success when it was first shown at the Paris Salon, later in the gallery of a M. de Trudaine who had commissioned it.

Years later, the Emperor Napoleon conceived the project of making a national collection of David's works in the Imperial Museum. He ordered Painter David to buy back the Death of Socrates even if he had to pay 60,000 francs for it. However, as Painter David had prophesied to his Emperor, M. de Trudaine refused all offers, said to Painter David: "I pray you to say to Napoleon that I esteem your work above any price. "Disgruntled, Napoleon remarked, "It is necessary that I respect property," stopped trying to get the Death of Socrates.

A year or two after the completion of his Socrates, public enthusiasm for Painter David's sketch for the picture of The Oath of the Tennis Court and his strong but not violent republicanism caused him to be elected to the September 1792 Convention. The next year, he voted for the death of Louis XVI. Later he became President of the Convention, found French inspiration for his pictures of historic catastrophes-- Last Moments of Lepelletier de Saint-Farceau, Marat Assassinated. When Napoleon became Emperor. Painter David portrayed him seated on a fiery horse, pointing the road to Italy.

After the return of the Bourbons in 1814 Painter David, deemed a regicide, was exiled. He retired to Brussels, where, renewing his interest in antiquity, he painted Amor Quitting Psyche, Mars Disarmed by Venus, rejected an offer to be made Minister of Fine Arts in Berlin and died in 1825.

Last week, Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it had bought the Death of Socrates, which able Critic-Artist Walter Pach last year found the heirs of M. de Trudaine ready to sell for a price which was not divulged. Said Curator of Paintings Bryson Burroughs: ''Many today are repelled by ... its smooth, unaccented surface, and tight handling, by its didacticism and sheer intellectuality. But others who can overcome the impediments of fashionable taste . . . will appreciate its true and lasting merit. . . ."

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