Jean Leon Gerome Selling Slaves in Rome

Gérôme painted six slave-market scenes set in either ancient Rome or 19th-century Istanbul. The subject provided him with an opportunity to depict facial expressions and to undertake figurative studies of sensual beauty. He painted another view of the same event--Slave Market in Rome (St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum)--in which the viewer looks over the heads of the spectators towards the slave.