2-995-732 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Coliseum, Rome", by F.L. Bridell in the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1860. Engraving of a painting. 'This vast arena, constructed for the indulgence of brutal appetites, covers an area of six English acres, and such was the amount of means which the Emperors had under their power that it was constructed in the course of two years and nine months, and that, in spite of the ravages of time and the hands, ancient and modem, which have despoiled it for its materials, enough of it still survives to tell of the original plan, and to give an idea of the programme of the barbarous entertainments which were enacted within it. There it stands, whilst many a nobler edifice has gone to ruin...Mr. Bridell has produced a striking view of this colossal structure of ill fame, which is rendered doubly impressive by being represented, under the cold, bluish light of the moon, in a stormy or threatening sky. There it scowls like a nightmare, a hideous vision of past crime amongst a people who, from having been the tyrants and oppressors of the world, are now themselves oppressed, degraded, and objects of mingled pity and scorn to surrounding nations'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.