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Roses of Heliogabalus: the beauty in the details. Arts 

Roses of Heliogabalus: the beauty in the details.

The Victorian era was marked by many paintings such as Rossetti’s “Proserpine”, Millais’ “Ophelia” and Hunt’s “The Awakening Conscience”. However, “Roses of Heliogabalus”, painted by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema in 1888 is the one I prefer. It depicts a remarkably facetious scene, the scandalous party thrown by Heliogabalus, or Elagabalus. Heliogabalus was a Roman emperor who rose to power at fourteen years old and was assassinated at eighteen. His short reign of four years was punctuated with numerous scandals, one of them being the banquet during which he drowned his guests…

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