3-011-604 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Nero after the Burning of Rome", by Carl Piloty, in the late International Exhibition, 1862. Engraving of a painting. '...the tyrant is represented stalking forth...to survey the desolation left by the flames, which still rage in the distance...he sweeps along without pity, horror, or remorse. Softly, like a prowling tiger, he treads over crumbling, tesselated pavement, and among fallen calcined capitals and architrave. There is a covert and furtive buoyancy in the bloated figure, which seems strangely belied by the rounded, unmanly, disproportionate arm hanging all so nerveless and flaccid. He is crowned with roses, and draped, as he was wont to appear in public, with white chamber robes of delicate texture, left trailing loosely...He is preceded by hard-featured, impassive, brutalised guards, and black slaves bearing torches, and followed by servile favourites and associates. Well may innocent little children quail and cower from the monster; well may mourners beside their dead relatives heap curses on his head. To the left of the foreground lie, among the charred ruins, a group of Christian martyrs...with the Imperial edict against the Christians fixed on the crossed timbers to which they are bound'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.