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The Death of Caesar, 1859-67
Jean-Leon Gerome
The Death of Caesar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Death of Caesar (French: La Mort de César) is an 1867 painting by the French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme. It depicts the moment after the assassination of Julius Caesar, when the jubilant conspirators are walking away from Caesar's dead body at the Theatre of Pompey, on the Ides of March (March 15), 44 BC. The painting is kept at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.
Characteristically, Gérôme has depicted not the incident itself, but its immediate aftermath. The illusion of reality that Gérôme imparted to his paintings with his smooth, polished technique led one critic to comment, "If photography had existed in Caesar's day, one could believe that the picture was painted from a photograph taken on the spot at the very moment of the catastrophe."
Gérôme's depiction of the aftermath of violence can also be seen in The Execution of Marshal Ney, The Duel After the Masquerade, and Jerusalem. |