Jacques-Louis David's tumour: an opportunity to study the natural history of a pleomorphic adenoma of the parotid gland.

The great artist and one-time revolutionary, Jacques-Louis David died in 1825. The cause of his death has been open to speculation. An extraordinary sequence of portraits of the artist describes his transition from handsome middle age to a deformed old man. During this phase a swelling appears at the angle of his left jaw and over a period of 20 years a facial palsy can be diagnosed. We submit that this evidence suggests that malignant transformation of a pleomorphic adenoma of the parotid gland was the proximal cause of his death.