Twelve Caesars, page 23
It is always dangerous to assume, in the absence of other evidence, that images of power in previous centuries went down as planned (all those vast images of ancient Egyptian pharaohs may have been as much spat upon as worshipped). We have already had a fleeting glimpse, in the satiric verses on prints, for example, of just how two-edged ‘examples of admirable conduct’ on the part of a Roman emperor had long been. But from the mid-eighteenth century on, column after column of printed commentary provides plenty of vivid evidence for drastically divergent reactions to Roman emperors, and to Roman culture more generally.
The English satirist William Makepeace Thackeray was surely not the only one to have his doubts about the model offered by the glorious Roman heroes recreated, for example, in the paintings of Jacques-Louis David. Was the first Brutus (the legendary ancestor of Julius Caesar’s assassin), who had his two sons put to death for political treachery, really a good example to follow in modern family life? Where did the boundary lie between strictness and sadism?54 Nor was Théophile Gautier alone in feeling a few qualms, as well as admiration, in the face of the lavish evocation of the Age of Augustus by Jean-Léon Gérôme, commissioned by Napoleon III, and put on show in 1855 at the Universal Exhibition in Paris (Fig 6.16). The emperor stands centre-stage, defeating his enemies (Antony and Cleopatra lie dead on the steps) and bringing peace to the barbarian nations who are lined up in homage; but in a new spin on the old medieval story that carefully aligned the birth of Jesus with the Augustan age, a classic nativity scene sits prominently beneath the imperial dais. What concerned Gautier here was not (as had worried others) the awkward mixture of classical and gothic styles, but the fact that many of those doing homage to the emperor were from nations that would eventually bring the Empire down. Was this painting as much a presage of Rome’s downfall as a celebration of Augustan greatness?55
6.16 Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Age of Augustus, The Birth of Christ (1852–54), a colossal painting, ten metres across, incorporates many precise historical references, as well as aligning the Nativity with the reign of Augustus. To the right of the emperor’s throne stand artists and writers. The bodies of Antony and Cleopatra lie on the steps, with Julius Caesar’s corpse just visible to the right—though largely concealed by his killers, Brutus and Cassius, dressed in white togas. The different peoples under Rome’s sway throng on either side, from a naked captive being dragged in by her hair on the left, to Parthians on the right returning the military standards that they had once captured from a Roman army.
In a different vein, the artists were sometimes judged to be simply not up to the task of capturing imperial virtue. In the 1760s, three paintings were commissioned from three different artists for one of the country properties of Louis XV, depicting noble deeds of the king’s ancient predecessors: Augustus shutting the Temple of Janus, to symbolise peace throughout the Roman world (Fig. 6.17); Trajan taking the trouble to listen to a poor woman asking for his help; and Marcus Aurelius distributing bread during a famine. The philosopher and critic Denis Diderot—while he admired the emperors concerned—had little time for the quality of their depiction. ‘Your Augustus is pitiful,’ he imagines saying to the painter. ‘Could you not have found an apprentice in your studio who would have dared to tell you that he was wooden, common and short … that, an emperor!’; and of the scene of Trajan, he quips that ‘the horse is the only notable character’. The king himself it seems had other objections. He was not bothered by such questions of artistic quality. He promptly threw the paintings out of what was in effect a very grand hunting lodge: he wanted scantily clad nymphs on its walls, not edifying examples of monarchical virtue. Ironically, two of the three paintings (Augustus and Marcus Aurelius) came to be appropriately recycled. In 1802, Napoleon’s staff came across them when they were looking for suitable decoration for the room in Amiens where ‘the first consul’ (his official title) was to sign the peace treaty with the British—and they have remained in the town ever since.56
6.17 Carle van Loo’s painting of 1765, three metres square, showing Augustus shutting the gates of the temple of the god Janus in Rome—an act which traditionally marked those (rare) moments when the whole of the Roman world was at peace. It later provided an appropriate backdrop for the signing of the peace treaty between Napoleon and the British in 1802.
But the images I turn to now are not those in which we detect cracks in the display of Roman virtue, but those where artists have faced head-on the transgressions of imperial rulers, the corruption of empire and the fragility and violence of dynastic succession: first, a group of paintings produced or exhibited in Paris all in the same year, featuring one of the most notorious villains out of the Twelve Caesars; second, a much more diverse set of images that in depicting the murder of imperial rulers, from Julius Caesar to Nero, raises important and uncomfortable questions about the nature of the imperial system itself.
Vitellius 1847
1847 was the emperor Vitellius’s greatest year in art since his short and unsavoury reign during the civil wars of 69 CE. He had long been one of the most recognisable of all Roman rulers, thanks to ‘his’ bust in the Grimani collection in Venice (which was not him at all, but most likely a portrait of some unknown Roman of the second century CE) (Fig. 1.24). His image had starred in popular demonstrations of physiognomics, and—in only faint disguise—had crept into a range of famous paintings. But in 1847, in Paris at least, the year before the revolution that deposed King Louis Philippe and his ‘July Monarchy’, with riots and protests already breaking out, Vitellius was everywhere in the art world.
His most famous appearance was as a cameo in the most sensational painting among the two thousand or more new works of art on show at the annual Paris ‘Salon’: Thomas Couture’s huge canvas Les Romains de la Decadence (The Romans of the Decadence—or The Orgy as it was aptly known for short) (Fig. 6.18). It had been hyped in an enthusiastic advertising campaign for a couple of years before it was ever seen in public, and the finished product did not disappoint. Over sixty years later, an article in an American art magazine was calling for a reproduction of it to be on display in every school in the United States; for it was ‘the greatest sermon in paint ever rendered’. (American school children have had a lucky escape, one can’t help thinking.)57
It was the kind of sermon that inspires, not by edifying example, but by an extravagant image of immorality; a mixture of shock and—no doubt—titillation. The canvas is filled with sprawling Roman banqueters in various states of undress, at the end of an all-night party (the sun seems to be just rising). Surrounding them are statues of men from the city’s glorious past, with a few austere observers on the margins, definitely not joining in the ‘fun’. It was a demonstration of Rome’s moral decline, with a few twists and tricky questions. In particular, what are we to make of the heroically nude marble figure who dominates the scene, based on a statue in the Louvre, traditionally identified as ‘Germanicus’—and, in contrast to the lascivious semi-nakedness of the party-goers below, reminds us that there are honourable and less honourable ways of going without one’s clothes? Germanicus, the husband of Agrippina the Elder, had been a popular and successful prince in the great traditions of Rome, once seen as a potential heir to the imperial throne. But he was also father to the monstrous emperor Caligula, and allegedly in 19 CE the victim of poisoning on the orders of his uncle, the emperor Tiberius. Here he serves as a hint that—whatever the exact date of the ‘decadence’ portrayed—the signs of corruption were inescapably present at almost the very beginning of imperial rule.58
There was a wider, contemporary message too. Despite the politics of the moment, commentators at the time did not interpret the painting as a narrow attack on the institution of monarchy; but it was widely seen as a criticism of disparities of wealth and of the careless immorality of the contemporary French elite and bourgeoisie.59 A clever set of cartoons in the satirical magazine Les Guêpes (Wasps), picturing the reactions of different Salon visitors, made this point sharply. In one, a thief decries the fact that the bourgeoisie in the painting has finished all the food. Another turns the social disequilibrium on its head: a man labelled as a ‘utilitarian’ points out that Couture’s canvas itself could have provided enough material to clothe a poor family.60
But, towards the left of the pile of banqueters, the slumbering figure with the distinctive features of Vitellius—so comatose that he does not even notice the naked odalisque just a few inches from his nose—gives an extra edge to this. Although he is often overlooked now, he was widely recognised by critics in 1847, who referred vaguely to his ‘Vitellian’ excesses. ‘Glory to Vitellius Caesar alone’ hailed one poet in an ironic response to the painting.61 But what exactly is he doing in this scene?
In part, he may be another clue to the date of the ‘decadence’. Was the emperor to be understood as the host of this orgy? And so, was Rome’s moral decline already well under way by 69 CE? In part, he may be an allusive tribute to Veronese, whom Couture often claimed as his inspiration.62 In his Last Supper, Veronese had given the well-fed steward the face of the Grimani Vitellius (Fig. 1.23); here the artist is nodding to that by conscripting the same face for one of his own characters. But there are other implications too. Anyone who knew the story of Vitellius, and of his very nasty end (dragged through the streets of Rome, tortured, beaten to death, impaled on a hook and thrown into the Tiber, as the new Flavian dynasty came to power), would see in this figure a strong hint that this scene of debauchery—and whatever modern lifestyle it evoked—was doomed. For those who spotted it, the face of the emperor was a visual guarantee that punishment was inevitable. As in Veronese’s painting, the features of the Roman emperor offer almost an internal commentary on the scene, and a key to how we should read it.
6.18 Roman vice is displayed on an appropriately grand scale, across Thomas Couture’s canvas of The Romans of the Decadence, almost eight metres wide. The sun is just rising, but this Roman orgy is still going strong; one of the few party-goers already slumbering is a figure towards the left of the main group, whose features—widely recognised by critics when it was first shown in 1847—were based on those of the Grimani Vitellius (Fig. 1.24).
But this was not the only Vitellius to confront visitors to the Salon of 1847. Among a range of painters offering classical themes, from ancient mythology to the saints and martyrs of the early church, one artist put Roman emperors centre-stage. That was the now little-known Georges Rouget, best remembered, if at all, as Jacques-Louis David’s favourite assistant. He exhibited two paintings, exactly the same size, intended as a contrasting pair: the one, a rather cosy image of the future emperor Titus, learning the art of good government from his father Vespasian; the other a striking study entitled Vitellius, Roman Emperor, and Christians Released to the Wild Beasts (Fig. 6.19). The emperor, who is based on a (slightly slimmed down) version of the ‘Grimani’, sits gazing ahead, apparently lost in his own thoughts, with his back to the arena where we can faintly make out victims facing the lions. At his shoulder, a martyr in chains holds a crucifix, while a young woman looks up at him intently from below.63
Some critics had fun reflecting that, in contrast to Couture with his decadent crowd, Rouget managed to conjure up Roman vice with only three figures. But they remained vague on the dynamics of the scene. Do we see an emperor unflinchingly set against mercy, despite entreaties? Or, more likely, are we to imagine that the painter is showing us the disturbing figments of the emperor’s imagination (the young woman may be his troubled conscience)? If so, then this prefigures some images, which (as we will see in the next chapter) focus on the awkwardness of power for the powerful, and on the human dilemmas and anxieties that may afflict even the cruellest tyrant.64 But it is a very far cry from the other controversial role that Vitellius took in the art of this particular year.
During the summer of 1847, ten of France’s most ambitious young artists spent several months painting the gory scene of Vitellius’s murder. They were the talented (and lucky) ones who had got through to the final round of the competition for the Prix de Rome, which gave the winner not only celebrity, but also a generous bursary for long-term residence in Rome. It was a simple process, though often laced with controversy. Every year, each of the short-listed candidates was asked to produce a painting on a theme set by a committee of the Académie des Beaux-Arts (Academy of Fine Arts), which then judged between them.65 In May 1847, the committee described the scene they wanted the contestants to represent: Vitellius dragged out of his hiding place in Rome, his hands tied behind his back, his head forced up at sword point so that his assassins ‘could abuse it more easily’. In late September, the winner and runner up were announced: in first place, Jules-Eugène Lenepveu; in second, Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry (Fig. 6.20). Theirs were both grisly renderings, in which the emperor’s face was not simply exposed, but was almost tugged off by the angry mob.66
6.19 An intimate depiction of vice (or of a guilty conscience) in Georges Rouget’s Vitellius, Roman Emperor, and Christians Released to the Wild Beasts, little more than a metre tall; it was first shown in 1847. Vitellius himself actually had nothing to do with the persecution of Christians, and the Colosseum, glimpsed in the background, was not built until after his reign. But the work offers an unsettling image of imperial cruelty in contrast to the ‘good’ emperor Titus, whom Rouget portrayed in a matching painting.
6.20 The assassination of Vitellius was the subject set for the ‘Prix de Rome’ in painting in 1847: (a) the first prize winner was Jules-Eugène Lenepveu, with a small but gory scene, just over thirty centimetres tall, set against an a-historical panorama of the city (Trajan’s column was erected more than fifty years after Vitellius’s death); (b) the second prize went to Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry with a no less brutal image on a slightly larger scale (it is almost one and a half metres wide).
The critics dissected the judges’ verdict. Lenepveu had slightly overdone the emotion, was one view; Baudry’s version was so ‘wild’, according to painter-turned-critic Etienne-Jean Delécluze, that it might have been done by a native Gaul at the time of Vitellius; others criticised aspects of the colouring and perspective, or suggested different candidates for the prize. But there was also unease about the subject itself. There had been plenty of mythical deaths and some bloody themes before (the biblical story of Judith decapitating Holophernes, for example, or Cato, the Republican ideologue and enemy of Julius Caesar, disembowelling himself). But this was the first and only imperial assassination in the history of the prize. It was not a subject, according to Delécluze again, which lent itself to fine treatment. ‘What kind of satisfaction can one derive from the representation, however well it is done, of a foul monster like the emperor Vitellius dragged to death, his throat slowly slit by soldiers and Roman citizens who have taken justice into their own hands?’67
How do we account for this focus on Vitellius as the emperor of the moment, and the conjunction of his excess, his guilty conscience and his murder? Again, it would be naïve to imagine a direct connection between these Vitellian themes and contemporary dissatisfaction with Louis Philippe and the July Monarchy. The overwhelming majority of criticism in newspapers and magazines concentrated on technical artistic details, or at most on broad social parallels—certainly not on the Roman emperor as a coded analogue for the king. Besides, in a gesture to fair play, the final selection of theme for the Prix de Rome competition was made by lot out of a shortlist of three (in 1847, two much blander subjects were also in the frame).68 Nonetheless, it would be equally naïve to deny indirect links at least. Delécluze’s comments about the people taking ‘justice into their own hands’ surely reflect underlying contemporary politics, especially as they appeared in a journal that was a strong supporter of the monarchy. And it is hard not to wonder whether the ten young artists locked away in their studios during the summer, working on their paintings of the lynching of a Roman emperor, saw no connection at all with the revolutionary uprising brewing outside. In one case, we know that they did. In a letter written the following year, Baudry (the second prize winner) complained of the anodyne theme set in the competition of 1848, shortly after the fall of the king in February: it was ‘Saint Peter in the house of Mary’. How could it be, he asked, that under the monarchy they had set ‘the agony of a tyrant’, but came up with nothing comparable under the new republic?69 He, at least, had noticed.
Assassination
Assassination always attracted artists, and the murder of Julius Caesar was a popular theme from the Middle Ages on, with different political spins. But assassination was about more than bloody violence or covert poisoning, palace plots or popular uprising. In a history of the Twelve Caesars, of whom only one (Vespasian) died without any allegations at all of foul play, it was also an integral part of imperial succession and even the imperial system itself. Many Renaissance paintings turned a blind eye to this, preferring to show succession more positively in terms of favourable omens for the future (better to have the emperor Claudius marked out for greatness by an eagle landing on his shoulder, than—as Suetonius among others gleefully recounted—discovered ignominiously cowering behind a curtain after the murder of his predecessor). Artists in the nineteenth century, on the other hand, whether prompted by contemporary politics or not, regularly used imaginative re-creations of scenes of assassination to interrogate the imperial system itself, reflecting on the vulnerability of the ruler, and on where power really lay. How emperors died proved to be a telling diagnostic of the regime as a whole.
One of the most influential of these paintings, widely reproduced in prints, and even used as the basis of stage sets for performances of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, was Gérôme’s Death of Caesar of 1859 (Fig. 6.21). The impression it makes is about as far as you could imagine from the same artist’s Age of Augustus (Fig. 6.16). The dictator lies in the senate house where he fell, ironically at the foot of Pompey’s statue. But this is now the moment after the deed itself, and the next steps are already being taken, the political readjustments already being made, in a world now without Caesar: some senators are simply taking flight; one large gentleman is biding his time; the assassins, daggers raised, are now in control (even if, as it turns out, only briefly). There is a very loaded contrast here with earlier representations of this most symbolic of all assassinations. In most cases (as in the tapestry in the Vatican, Fig. 6.8), Caesar is the focus of attention at the moment of his death; while he yet has breath, the victim is still star of the show. Here Gérôme is reminding us of just how fleeting autocratic power is. Caesar has been reduced to a blood-stained bundle, barely noticeable at bottom left.70
