La Fiancée de Bélus

Motte painted this in 1885, when Paris salons were full of ancient Babylon and Assyria. The great winged bulls dug out of Mesopotamia had recently reached European museums, and painters built a lurid antiquity around them. The scene shows a supposed Babylonian rite: a girl left overnight at the feet of the colossal god Bel, chosen that day in a beauty contest. Motte named the Greek historian Herodotus as his source, but the passage he cited turns out to have been invented. For the temple he borrowed the Greek architecture of Olympia, and for the idol he copied the Assyrian winged bulls known as lamassu. The Musee d'Orsay, which owns it now, only acquired the picture in 2013.