Category:Nero--art (subject)

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Works of art related to Nero

<Fiction : Nero (literature) -- Nero (music) -- Nero (cinema)>

Overview

In spite of his popularity in literature and music, very rarely Nero appears in works of art. Christian iconography ignores him, if not in the (apocryphal) episode of the dispute between Peter and Simon Magus. Two major (and quite influential) paintings appeared at the end of the 19th century. The first, by Polish artist Henryk Siemiradzki (1877), showed Nero as a sadistic ruler in persecuting the early church, thus preparing the path to the success of Quo Vadis? (1895). The second, by British artist John William Waterhouse (1878) focused instead on his more intimate dimension of insecurity and trouble after having ordered the killing of his mother. Both paintings consolidated the myth and the image of Nero's "madness."