Gallop to Freedom: On the Importance of the Classical Sources for Gérôme’s Circus Maximus

One of the most important American private collections of the nineteenth century was that of Alexander Turney Stewart at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in New York. In it, beginning in 1874, hung the spectacular work of the French academic artist Jean-Léon Gérôme (Vesoul, 1824–Paris, 1904): Pollice Verso (fig. 1), a painting which, thanks to the reproductions and photo engravings of Adolphe Goupil (dealer and later father-in-law of the artist), became so tremendously popular that it was the most prized possession of the valuable collection. Perhaps because of this, the educated patron—who, as it happens, had briefly made a living as a tutor of Greek and Latin literature before becoming immensely rich with his business1—commissioned another painting directly from the artist that could serve as a pendant to his famous paint-