A Última Oração dos Mártires Cristãos

The Baltimore collector William Walters ordered this painting from Gérôme in 1863, and then waited 20 years for it. Gérôme kept the commission on his easel, scraping it down and beginning again three times over, before finally delivering it in 1883. It shows a knot of Christians kneeling in prayer on the sand of a Roman arena while lions pad out of a trapdoor toward them, and along the far wall human figures burn on crosses, coated in pitch. Gérôme had a reputation for archaeological exactness, yet here he bent the facts for effect, setting the scene in a circus where such executions never actually took place. The little group at prayer holds together while the animals cross the empty sand.