Focus on Cleopatra and Caesar (painting) and discuss the 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.  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, Gérômepainted 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.
French writer Prosper Mérimée first proposed the subject of Cleopatra and Caesar in a letter sent to Gérôme in December 1860. 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".
Champs-Élysées La Païva The Cock Fight Academic art Neo-Grec Hôtel de la Païva Academic Cleopatra Earl Shinn Théophile Gautier Orientalist painting Prosper Mérimée Jean-Léon Gérôme historical