ITALIAN NEOCLASSICAL SCHOOL, CIRCA 1830

CHRISTIAN FAMILY UNDER NERO, BEFORE EXECUTION

ITALIAN NEOCLASSICAL SCHOOL, CIRCA 1830

Pen and ink with grey wash on paper
18 × 20.5 cm / 7.1 × 8.1 in
With frame: 45.5 × 48 cm / 17.9 × 18.9 in
Wooden frame from the 1930s, beige museum-style mount

It sometimes happens in the history of art that certain visual archetypes prove to be far older and far more complex in their genesis than we might initially assume. Such is the case with the theme of the persecution of early Christians. Thanks to Henryk Sienkiewicz and his immortal novel Quo Vadis, this subject entered modern consciousness not merely as a religious narrative drawn from the lives of saints, but as a powerful historical drama rooted in private life, moral conflict, and human suffering.

Yet long before Sienkiewicz, this theme already stood at the centre of artistic exploration by his compatriot, the Polish painter Henryk Siemiradzki, whose monumental canvases devoted to the persecution of Christians under Nero occupy a significant place in nineteenth-century art. Siemiradzki, however, was not a pioneer either. French painters of the Romantic period — notably Paul Delaroche — had repeatedly turned to scenes of early Christian martyrdom, drawn by their dramatic, moral, and emotional intensity.

The true origins of this theme reach even further back, to the late Neoclassical period and the dawn of Romanticism, when the perception of ancient Roman and Greek history began to shift. Antiquity was no longer viewed primarily through a mythological or literary lens, but increasingly as a field of historical tragedy and human drama. A defining moment in this transformation was Karl Bryullov’s The Last Day of Pompeii, a work that radically reimagined the ancient world as a living, vulnerable, and doomed reality.

The present drawing stands as a compelling example of these early artistic explorations. Here, the classical setting serves as the backdrop for an intensely intimate and restrained tragedy: a Christian family awaiting execution, depicted not as symbolic figures of faith, but as fragile human beings bound together by fear, hope, and silent dignity.

It is particularly noteworthy that a second drawing by the same unknown artist is known, closely related in composition, yet differing in a crucial detail: in that version, the mother does not hold a cross. This seemingly minor alteration is, in fact, profoundly significant. By removing the explicit religious symbol, the artist steps away from a strictly historical or confessional narrative and transforms the scene into a timeless human tragedy, universal in its emotional resonance.

From a formal point of view, the drawing reveals a confident mastery of line and form. The figures are modelled with supple, continuous contours, avoiding harsh breaks and demonstrating a refined understanding of bodily structure beneath the drapery. Line here is not merely descriptive but expressive: it guides the eye, reinforces the tension of the poses, and intensifies the sense of psychological compression and inevitability. The composition reflects a clear grasp of relief and spatial construction, aligning the work with the finest examples of Italian Neoclassicism around 1830, in which classical subject matter serves not as ornament, but as a vehicle for deeply felt dramatic meaning.