Five years into Nero’s reign as emperor, he had his mother murdered. It was all downhill from there: Rome burned, and so did many Christians.
Siemiradzki
Stories of the lives of Alexander, Julius Caesar, Phocion, and Cato the Younger, with superb paintings by Gérôme, Poussin, and others. And some lessons for today.
Biography to the death of Darius the King of Persia, with superb paintings by Degas, Elisabetta Sirani, Altdorfer, Jan Brueghel the Elder, and more.
Paintings of gladiatorial combat and martyrdom in the Colosseum had also been quite different before Gérôme’s ‘Ave Caesar’. Examples from Artemisia Gentileschi and others.
She has been a symbol of French nationalism, of the revanchism following the Franco-Prussian War, and then of early feminism: some wonderful paintings of Joan’s divine visions.
The Eclectic Light Company 