Gallop to Freedom: On the Importance of the Classical Sources for Gérôme’s Circus Maximus

Abstract

Gallop to Freedom: On the Importance of the Classical Sources for Gérôme’s Circus Maximus Joan Mut Arbós (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pollice Verso, 1872. Phoenix Art Museum. One of the most important American private collections of the nineteenth century was that of Alexander Turney Stewart at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in New York. In it, beginning in 1874, hung the spectacular work of the French academic artist Jean-Léon Gérôme (Vesoul, 1824–Paris, 1904): Pollice Verso (fig. 1), a painting which, thanks to the reproductions and photo engravings of Adolphe Goupil (dealer and later father-in-law of the artist), became so tremendously popular that it was the most prized possession of the valuable collection. Perhaps because of this, the educated patron—who, as it happens, had briefly made a living as a tutor of Greek and Latin literature before becoming immensely rich with his business1—commissioned another painting directly from the artist that could serve as a pendant to his famous painting. [End Page 55] This is how the dazzling Circus Maximus, also known as The Chariot Race (tt) was born, a work that completed the vision of the Roman ludi by Gérôme and for which Stewart paid the incredible sum of $29,000, a figure that remained a record never exceeded in the artist’s lifetime.2 Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 2. Jean-Léon Gérôme, Circus Maximus, 1876. The Art Institute of Chicago. George F. Harding Collection. The painting knew a wide diffusion thanks to the postcards and photogravures of Goupil,3 giving rise to numerous imitations, such as the famous Chariot Race in the Circus Maximus in the Presence of the Emperor Domitian by Alexander von Wagner.4 After a short time, moreover, its diffusion would also increase with the enormous success (to which its proto-cinematic nature undoubtedly contributed) of the novel Ben-Hur by Lewis Wallace (1880) and its famous scene of the chariot race, later consecrated in cinema as one of the landmarks of the contemporary imagination about the Roman world.5 Yet, despite the high figure that its owner paid for it and its influence on subsequent painting and cinema, Circus Maximus did not achieve anywhere near the critical success that Pollice Verso had garnered. In fact, of Gérôme’s entire series on the Roman ludi,6 this painting has aroused the least interest among critics and specialists. None other than Henry James, then a young journalist, wrote the following upon seeing the painting: Mr. A. T. Stewart has made a less brilliant acquisition. […] It is a capital example of the artist’s archaeological skill though it would require a specialist [End Page 56] to determine, on this line, its triumphs and its shortcomings. What the ordinary observer sees is that the painter has mastered a vast amount of curious detail, and after all, unless the ghost of some old Roman man about town comes back for the purpose, I do not see who is to prove that M. Gerome’s ingenious reconstruction is either a good likeness of the actual scene or a poor one.7 Such unfavorable receptions have persisted up to today. In its attention to fulfilling its patron’s commission, Circus Maximus has been seen as an example of what Ivo Blom defines as Gérôme’s “clinical approach to Antiquity.”8 Howard Oakley claims that this is one of the few canvases by Gérôme that leaves him cold.9 The great remoteness of the figures may, indeed, leave the viewer with such a feeling. Yet, Gérôme’s attention to “a vast amount of curious detail,” as James critically observed, is precisely why the painting deserves more attention for its “ingenious reconstruction.” It is in these curious details and in its clinical approach that a complex narrative might be better understood and those remote figures might come to life. ________ when the work crossed the Atlantic Ocean, it was followed by a small explanatory letter that would...