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''Cleopatra and Caesar'' (), also known as ''Cleopatra Before Caesar'', is an oil on canvas painting by the French Academic artist Jean-Léon Gérôme, completed in 1866. The work was originally commissioned by the French courtesan La Païva but she was unhappy with the finished painting and returned it to Gérôme. It was exhibited at the Salon of 1866 and the Royal Academy of Arts in 1871. Gérôme's painting is one of the earliest modern depictions of Cleopatra emerging from a carpet in the presence of Julius Caesar, a minor historical inaccuracy that arose out of the translation of a scene from Plutarch's ''Life of Caesar'' and the semantic change of the word "carpet" over time. The work is considered a classic example of Egyptomania and was mass-produced by Goupil, allowing it to reach a wide audience. The painting was held by California banker Darius Ogden Mills and remained in the Mills family art collection for over a century until it was sold to a private collector in 1990. ==Background== Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) was a nineteenth century French painter and sculptor.〔 At the age of twenty-three, he came to the attention of the art world at the Salon of 1847 with ''The Cock Fight'' (1846), a Neo-Grec painting that was praised by Théophile Gautier.〔Musée d'Orsay (2006). Jean-Léon Gérôme. "(Young Greeks Attending a Cock Fight, also called The Cock Fight )." Retrieved October 23, 2015.〕 With works informed by his frequent travels throughout the Middle East and visits to Egypt, Gérôme specialized in historical and Orientalist painting and became known as a leader of the Academic art movement.〔 According to historian Charles Sowerwine, Gérôme painted erotic subjects with a photographic approach and sensual charge, but avoided 'indecency' by the use of Oriental and historical contexts . . . To us, Gérôme's nudes seem pornographic, but to contemporaries they were idealized by their removal from contemporary society and their insertion in the Oriental context.〔Sowerwine, Charles (2009). ''France Since 1870: Culture, Society and the Making of the Republic''. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 46-47. .ISBN 9781137013859.〕 French writer Prosper Mérimée first proposed the subject of ''Cleopatra and Caesar'' in a letter sent to Gérôme in December 1860.〔〔Bovet, Alfred (1884). ''(Lettres autographes composant la collection de m. Alfred Bovet )''. Paris: Charavay Freres. p. 320. .〕 La Païva, a wealthy French courtesan, later commissioned the painting from Gérôme, intending it for display in the Hôtel de la Païva, her mansion on the Champs-Élysées. According to American art critic Earl Shinn, the work was originally painted on silk and was designed as a "transparency to be lowered or raised midway of a long saloon" in La Païva's mansion, "which it was desirable to divide occasionally into two".〔Shinn, Earl (Strahan ) (1881). ''(Gerome: A Collection of the Works of J.L. Gerome in One Hundred Photogravures )''. Volume 10, Plate 6. Samuel L. Hall. .〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cleopatra and Caesar (painting)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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