✨ New Arrivals Just Dropped!Explore
HomeStore

The Roses of Heliogabalus | Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema | 1888

Product image 1
Product image 2
Product image 3
Product image 4
Product image 5
Product image 6
Product image 7
Product image 8

The Roses of Heliogabalus | Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema | 1888

The Roses of Heliogabalus | Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema | 1888

About the artwork:

The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema is one of the most opulent and unsettling masterpieces of Victorian classicism, blending beauty with horror. Inspired by accounts from the Roman historian Aelius Lampridius, the painting depicts the young Emperor Heliogabalus hosting a lavish banquet where guests are suffocated under a cascade of rose petals—a chilling display of decadence and cruelty. Alma-Tadema’s meticulous attention to detail and mastery of marble textures, combined with the sensuality of the pink petals and the languid figures, create a striking contrast between aesthetic pleasure and moral corruption. The result is a haunting allegory of excess and vanity, reflecting not only the decline of Imperial Rome but also the moral anxieties of the artist’s own Victorian society.

Select Select Size
Select Frame Options
From $89.35

Original: $297.82

-70%
The Roses of Heliogabalus | Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema | 1888—

$297.82

$89.35

Product Information

Shipping & Returns

Description

About the artwork:

The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema is one of the most opulent and unsettling masterpieces of Victorian classicism, blending beauty with horror. Inspired by accounts from the Roman historian Aelius Lampridius, the painting depicts the young Emperor Heliogabalus hosting a lavish banquet where guests are suffocated under a cascade of rose petals—a chilling display of decadence and cruelty. Alma-Tadema’s meticulous attention to detail and mastery of marble textures, combined with the sensuality of the pink petals and the languid figures, create a striking contrast between aesthetic pleasure and moral corruption. The result is a haunting allegory of excess and vanity, reflecting not only the decline of Imperial Rome but also the moral anxieties of the artist’s own Victorian society.