Cruel Games

At the Colosseum by the British painter Harold Hume Piffard (1895-1938). Piffard depicts here an elegant Roman noblewoman watching comfortly the bloody spectacle below. A well constucted contrast indeed.

Nero’s Torches

When Roman decadence has become a popular subject artists discoverd christians martyrs. It wasn't the old martyrs well known from religious paintings. Know art favoured a morbid horror show. Here the viewer of the painting is more absorbed by the roman side, he is not suffering, he is watching the spectacle.


This painting "Nero’s Torches" (1876) by Henryk Hector Siemiradzki (1843-1902), shows how christian martyrs are burned alive on stakes. But just as important (or even more) are the roman costumes, all the exotic details and the half naked slave girls.

Gladiators

Once people were prepared to see Rome as a decadent nation they started to enjoy this decadence. Roman chariot races, christian martyrs and above all the great show in the arena.

The first picture is the most famous by the French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904). He called it "Pollice Verso" (1872), what means "thumb down". He's glamorizing the bloody spectacle as usual in his paintings.
But nevertheless its a great work and Ridley Scott said that he was convinced by it to make his movie Gladiator.

This painting is called "The Spoliarium" (1884) and it's by the Filipino painter Juan Luna y Novicio (1857–1899). It has not that glorification in Gérôme's style.
Luna didn't want to entertain at first, he wanted to critizize the abuses of the colonial rule in the Philippines.

Roman Decadence

Nearly all western nations regarded themselves as heirs of the Roman Emire. Above all occidental art had its roots in Renaissance and therefore in Roman culture or in that what was taken for it. It was Roman civilasation where all European nations searched their patterns. In neoclassicism they tried to copy the architecture, political structures, livestyle and art. Shure that this where in many cases only imaginations, but Rome seemed to be the forefather of all.

But when most where satisfied to compare their modern empires with that of Rome, some started to think about decadence. The book of Edward Gibbon "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" became famous. And with the time people were less interested in the grandeur of the Roman Empire but in its decadence. Roman decadence became synonymical to Social criticism.

An appropriate expression of this accomplished the French artist Thomas Couture (1815-1879) with his painting "The Romans during the Decadence" (1847). Couture wanted to criticize his own contemporary french society. So he explained his painting with a quotation from the Roman poet Juvenal: "Crueller than war, vice fell upon Rome and avenged the conquered world".