Gérôme mixed oriental and historical subjects. Probably he depicts the end of a rebellion against Ali Pasha in the early 19th century. But the whole scenery and the costumes are so archaic that it could also have happened in much older times. But I think that this was the primary reason why Gérôme was so fascinated from the Orient.
An Oasis in the Bad Lands
Prayer to the Mystery
The Medicine Man
Pott shows the false triumph of Napoleon, the elusive relief of his exhausted men. On the horizon is Moscow, but destiny is symbolized by the skeleton in the lower right corner.
Unconscious Rivals (1893)
The Colosseum (1896)
Lessing depicts here the revolutionary Hussites as an idealized example. They are demanding a reform of the Catholic Church and of the feudal society. Disguised as a history painting it’s an explicit critic of German society during the restoration after Napoleonic wars, a prelude to the Revolution of 1948.
The Spanish painter Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz (1848-1921) is relating here a nice anecdote about the fall of Granada in 1492. When the Sultan Boabdil, the last Moorish ruler in Spain, had to leave his beloved Granada he turned around and made a big sigh. As legend tells his mother approached him and said: "don't weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man".
Return of the Cossacks (1894)
Battle over the Turkish Banner
Millais depicts here Sir Walter Raleigh, the best known English explorer of the Elizabethan age. But he didn’t show him on board fighting the Spanish or pointing to distant horizons. Millais shows him as a boy listening fascinated the stories of an old sailor, maybe a pirate. The subjects of the painting are not the heroic deeds, but the way dreams were born.
