The Girl or the Vase

At the 1878 World's Fair in Paris, this large canvas won Siemiradzki a gold medal and the Legion of Honour, the kind of official reward academic history painting still commanded. The scene is set in ancient Rome. A wealthy buyer reclines, weighing a choice: a fine East Asian vase held up on one side, and on the other a young enslaved woman, dragged before him and being stripped for inspection by the dealer. The painter lets the polished marble, the sunlight, and the rich color carry the eye past what is actually happening. Decades later the writer Boris Pasternak recalled it in Doctor Zhivago, his character noting the fat Roman making up his mind between the woman and the vase.