1854 (ca.), Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Age of Augustus, the Birth of Christ -- Getty Museum (Los Angeles)
From the museum label: This study symbolizes the world peace established by Caesar Augustus (63 B.C.-A.D. 14) just before Christ's birth. The emperor, surrounded by intellectuals and statesmen, sits atop a dais and touches the shoulder of the personification of Rome. In the foreground is the Nativity. Gérôme perhaps sought to flatter Emperor Napoléon III (1808-1873), whose government commissioned the final painting and who was identified by his propagandists as a "new Augustus."
1854 (ca.), Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Age of Augustus, the Birth of Christ -- Getty Museum (Los Angeles)
From the museum label: This study symbolizes the world peace established by Caesar Augustus (63 B.C.-A.D. 14) just before Christ's birth. The emperor, surrounded by intellectuals and statesmen, sits atop a dais and touches the shoulder of the personification of Rome. In the foreground is the Nativity. Gérôme perhaps sought to flatter Emperor Napoléon III (1808-1873), whose government commissioned the final painting and who was identified by his propagandists as a "new Augustus."