(In a Private Collection, United States)
The amphitheatre is filled to overflowing with the crowd that has
gathered to witness the martyrdom of the Christians. Around the vast
circle, unhappy victims agonize upon the cross. In one corner of the
arena, a group of men and women, condemned to die, confess their new
faith in an ardent prayer, while from the opened subterraneous passage
the ravenous beasts are advancing upon their human prey.]
Italy also, with all her memories, furnished Gérôme with scenes of
striking contrast, evoked from the vanished past, spectacles at once
sumptuous and barbaric. He caught this atmosphere with rare
felicity. _Paestum_ (1851) commands attention because of its group of
buffaloes, which the Goncourts praised for "their ponderous weight of
head, the solidity of their huge bulk, the grouping of their attitudes,
the shagginess of their coats, the prevailing sense of grateful
coolness."
It is necessary to assign a place apart, in this series, for the
_Augustan Age, Birth of Christ_ (1855, Amiens Museum). In his own
private opinion, confided to his cousin Timbal, Gérôme held that
this enormous composition, measuring ten metres in length by seven
in height, lacked inventiveness and originality. It is true that the
artist's personality is not clearly revealed in this picture, which
is a sort of vast commentary on a phrase by Bossuet, and indisputably
draws its inspiration from the _Apotheosis of Homer_ by Ingres.
Nevertheless, no one can dispute its noble qualities, and to borrow a
phrase from Théophile Gautier, its "high philosophic significance."
Beside Augustus Caesar deified appears Rome, in the form of a woman,
helmeted, armed with a buckler, and clad in a red chlamys; then
Tiberius, standing on the right, then statesmen and poets, Caesar,
Cleopatra, Anthony, Brutus, and Cassius grouped together; lastly the
throng of all nations on their knees, admirably rendered. In the
centre, relatively unimportant in this immense assemblage, are the
Virgin Mary, the Infant Jesus, and St. Joseph, treated in a curious
fashion, modelled on the manner of Giotto. "It is the chief ornament of
the Amiens Museum," Gérôme would say jestingly; for he had largely lost
respect for this prolonged and important effort which represented two
years' work of a serious and diligent student of history.
The two flawless masterpieces of Gérôme, the eloquent interpreter of
ancient Rome, are unquestionably his _Ave Caesar, Morituri te Salutant_
(1859), purchased by Mathews, in which, in the presence of a bloated,
overfed Vitellius, sitting pacifically in his imperial box, not far
from the white Vestals, crowned with verbena, gladiators are fighting
and dying in the circus, and _Pollice Verso_ (1874) in which these same
gladiators are represented, no longer as Roman soldiers, but in the
exact costume that they wear at the moment when the Emperor and the
crowd, ravenous for carnage, turn down their thumbs as signal for the
death stroke. This work, published by Goupil, did not appear at the
Salon. We must cite further _Gaius Maximus_, the _Chariot Race_, which
aroused legitimate enthusiasm in America; The _Wild Beasts Entering
the Arena_ (1902) and we must not forget that Gérôme also expended his
energy as a sculptor upon these same attractive gladiatorial figures.
Striking and pathetic contrast is also earnestly striven for and
strongly rendered in _The Death of Caesar_ (1859, 1867). One almost
needs to be an incomparable "stage manager" in order to show the
body of Caesar after this fashion, in the foreground, in the chamber
deserted by the Senators; one Conscript Father, as a touch of satire,
has fallen asleep. The effect is powerful, even though it has been
sought for with too obvious care. Undoubtedly Nadar had the laugh on
his side when he compared the body of Caesar to a bundle of linen and
called the picture "The Day of the Washerwoman." Gérôme appreciated
the humour of this pleasantry. It is equally true that Baudelaire
applauded the picture, exclaiming: "Certainly this time M. Gérôme's
imagination has outdone itself; it passed through a fortunate crisis
when it conceived of Caesar alone, stretched upon the ground before his
overturned throne ... this terrible epitome tells everything."
The clever erudition of the painter, who had already revealed himself
as an adherent of the so-called group of "Pompeiians," in the
_Gyneceum_ (1850),--in which we perceive a group of nude women in the
court of a house in Herculaneum,--asserts itself once more, coupled
with an incisive touch of epigram in _Two Augurs Unable to Look at
Each Other Without Laughing_, and similarly in the _Cave Canem_, now at
Vesoul (in front of a Roman house a slave is playing the role of watch
dog), in the _Sale of Slaves at Rome_ (1884), etc.
A similar ingenuity, with greater amplitude, constitutes the charm
and the surprise of _Cleopatra and Caesar_ (1886). Cleopatra has had
herself brought into Caesar's cabinet in the palace at Alexandria,
concealed in a bundle of clothing. "Her appearance there," said Maxime
du Camp, who also praised the interest of the accessories, treated with
exquisite care, "is perfectly chaste, in spite of her nudity." All the
details are executed with a masterly command of picturesqueness and
accuracy.
As a religious painter Gérôme has to his credit the _Virgin,
Infant Jesus, and St. John_ (1848), a youthful work imitated
from Perugino, a _St. George_, in the church of Saint-Georges at
Vesoul, a _St. Martin Cutting his Mantle_, in the ancient refectory
of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, a _Death of St. Jerome_ (1878) at
Saint-Séverin, a _Moses on Mt. Sinai_, and _The Plague at Marsailles_,
and, most important of all, _Golgotha Consummatum Est_, intensely
lugubrious and symbolic in aspect, with Christ and the two thieves
appearing, through the desolate atmosphere, like writhing shadows on
the cross. This conception cost the author a violent diatribe from
Veuillot, while Edmund About, although making certain reservations,
wrote on the other side: "The entire sum of qualities that are
distinctive of M. Gérôme will be found in this picture."
As a painter of exotic life Gérôme remains an observer of the highest
order. If he has not wholly revealed Italy to us in his _Guardians of
the Herd_ and his _Pifferari_ (1855, 1857), he has at least done so
in the case of Egypt, still deeply impregnated with an ancient and
splendid civilization, naïve and at the same time venerable, Egypt
before the advent of tourists, a luminous land where the Nile and
the Desert reign supreme, a land of magnificence and of savagery.
Landscapes of this Egypt of poetic mystery, and of Palestine as
well, childish or perverse _almas_, rude Albanian Chiefs, Turbaned
Turks,--one never wearies of these decorative effects, these clear
visions, these scenes of animation, whether violent or delicate,
the people, the vegetation, the fabrics, all resplendent under the
marvellous sky of the Orient.
In the company of this intrepid, venturesome and observant traveller,
we witness the passage of _Egyptian Recruits Crossing the Desert_, we
are present at _Prayers in the House of an Albanian Chief_, we pause
in the _Plain of Thebes_, not far from _Memmon and Sesostris_, and
we watch the _Camels at the Drinking Trough_, so admirably realized.
Gérôme, who had a gift for finding the right and pleasing phrase, gave
this rather neat definition of a camel: "The Ship of the Sea of Sand."
Similarly, the _Egyptian Straw-chopper_ (1861, again exhibited in
1867, and purchased by M. Werlé) symbolizes, simply yet forcefully,
agricultural Egypt, and all the varied shadings of her pastoral
poetry. Then again, there is _The Prisoner_ (1863), in which a boat
is making its way along the vast and pacific Nile. Two negro oarsmen,
the master, a bashibazouk, are in the prow; and in the stern, beside a
buffoon, who apparently derides him, while twanging the strings of a
guitar, the prisoner lies cross-wise, fast bound, and abandons himself
to his cruel destiny. There, in a setting of enchanted beauty, we have
the chief actors in this original drama, in which dream and reality are
blended.
What a horde of types, some of them bizarre, others simply comic! There
are, taking them as they come, a _Turkish Butcher in Jerusalem_ (1863),
_The Alma_ (Professional Singing Girl--1864), _The Slaves in the Market
Place_, _The Clothing Merchant at Cairo_, _The Albanians Playing Chess_
(1867), The _Itinerant Merchant at Cairo_ (1869). Then there is the
_Promenade of the Harem_, and still others, the _Santon_ (Turkish Monk)
_at the Door of the Mosque_ and _Women at the Bath_ (1876), the
_Arab and his Courser_ and _The Return from the Hunt_ (1878).
[Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE VENDOR OF RUGS