Alma-tadema, or antiquity reinvented in velvet and marble

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, the Dutchman who became one of the most expensive painters of the Victorian era, never claimed to reconstruct the past. He reinvented it. His canvases were stage sets where every detail—a fold in a toga, the gleam of marble, the curve of a hip beneath sheer fabric—was calculated to enchant. Yet behind this icy perfection lay an almost manic obsession: to bring back to life an antiquity that had never existed, except in the imagination of an era hungry for escape.

01The painter who collected stones

To understand Alma-Tadema, one must first enter his studio. Not just any studio: the one at 44 Grove End Road in London, a house transformed into a neo-Greek temple. The walls were covered with photographs of ancient architecture, plaster casts of statues, fragments of mosaics. On a table, samples of marble—Carrara white, antique green, red porphyry—waited to be studied under every kind of light. The artist, it was said, could spend hours caressing a stone to grasp its texture, its grain, the way it absorbed or reflected light.

This passion for archaeology was no mere whim. Alma-Tadema travelled to Italy three times (1863, 1867, 1871), wandering the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum with a sketchbook and a camera. He studied frescoes, mosaics, everyday objects unearthed from the ashes. But unlike archaeologists, who sought to reconstruct the past with rigour, he wanted to embellish it. His marbles were never eroded by time, his columns never cracked. His Romans wore togas of immaculate white, as if twenty centuries of dust had never dared to settle upon them.

This approach earned him criticism. Some accused him of "painting statues rather than men," so stiff and perfect did his figures seem. Others charged him with plagiarism, since he systematically used photographs of costumed models to compose his scenes. But Alma-Tadema cared little. "I do not copy nature, I reinvent it," he reportedly replied. And it was precisely this reinvention that captivated his era.

02The Victorians’ Rome: a three-dimensional fantasy

Why did Victorian England, in the midst of the industrial revolution, become so infatuated with antiquity? The answer lies in one word: escape. At a time when cities were black with soot, factories belched smoke, and puritanical morality stifled desire, Alma-Tadema’s canvases offered refuge. His scenes of public baths, banquets, and hanging gardens were not history lessons but waking dreams.

Take The Tepidarium (1881), one of his most famous works. A young woman, barely veiled, reclines on a marble bench, a fan in hand. Around her, columns, mosaics, the play of light on water. Nothing dramatic, nothing violent—just an atmosphere of luxurious calm. Yet the painting shocked. Some saw it as an apology for idleness, others as a disguised erotic provocation. But for most Victorians, it was a window onto a world where time had stopped, where beauty reigned unchallenged.

Alma-Tadema understood something essential: his audience did not want the real Rome, with its wars, its slaves, its mad emperors. They wanted an idealised Rome, where women were goddesses, men were heroes, and marble gleamed like gold. His canvases were film sets before their time—and this explains their lasting influence on Hollywood. When Cecil B. DeMille filmed Cleopatra in 1934, when Ridley Scott imagined the baths of Rome in Gladiator, it was Alma-Tadema they had in mind.

03The art of painting light

If Alma-Tadema’s canvases still fascinate today, it is largely due to his mastery of light. Not the harsh, realistic light of the Impressionists, but a worked, almost sculptural light that gave his scenes a nearly supernatural quality.

Look at A Coign of Vantage (1895). Three women, dressed in diaphanous tunics, watch a gladiator from a loggia. Light filters through the columns, casting sharp shadows on the marble, while the fabric of their robes seems almost transparent under its rays. Alma-Tadema did not merely paint light—he directed it, like a stage director. He used glazes—layers of translucent paint—to give his marbles a nearly liquid glow. And he played with reflections: those of water in The Baths of Caracalla, those of mirrors in The Mirror (1877), where a woman gazes pensively at her reflection, which seems to live a life of its own.

This obsession with light was not merely aesthetic. It served a purpose: to create an atmosphere of serene luxury. In a Victorian world marked by agitation and change, Alma-Tadema’s canvases offered a haven of peace. His scenes do not tell stories—they envelop. You do not look at them; you sink into them.

04The scandal of the roses

Among all his works, The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888) remains the most famous—and the most controversial. Inspired by a passage in the Historia Augusta that recounts how Emperor Heliogabalus smothered his guests under a shower of rose petals, Alma-Tadema transformed this macabre anecdote into a scene of sensual decadence.

The canvas is a technical tour de force. The petals, painted one by one, seem to cascade downward, while the revellers, half-buried, raise their wine cups with studied indifference. In the foreground, a young man chokes, his mouth slightly open, his cheeks flushed with effort. But what strikes most is the beauty of the scene. Even death, here, is aestheticised.

Yet the painting sparked heated debate. Some saw it as an apology for cruelty, others as a metaphor for Victorian society, where the excesses of the rich smothered the poor. Alma-Tadema never explained his intention. "A painting must speak for itself," he said. And perhaps that is the secret of his genius: his canvases do not narrate—they suggest. They leave the viewer free to project their own fantasies.

05The family as workshop

Behind the painter stood an entrepreneur. Alma-Tadema did not work alone: he ran a veritable workshop, where his wife and daughters played key roles.

Laura Theresa Epps, his second wife, was herself a painter. She appears in several of his canvases, such as The Women of Amphissa (1887), where she portrays a Greek priestess. Their two daughters, Laurence and Anna, also posed for him. Anna, in particular, served as the model for The Mirror, where her adolescent face is reflected in an ancient looking-glass.

This family workshop was a well-oiled machine. Alma-Tadema designed the compositions, Laura painted the flowers and fabrics, while specialised assistants handled the architecture or still lifes. The result? An impressive output—over 400 canvases in 50 years of work—and a visual signature instantly recognisable.

Yet this approach also had its detractors. Some critics accused Alma-Tadema of "painting on an assembly line," like an industrialist rather than an artist. But he defended himself: "A painting is like a symphony. Every detail must harmonise with the whole." And it must be said that, even in his most "commercial" works, this harmony is always present.

06The legacy of a dreamer

After his death in 1912, Alma-Tadema’s reputation declined. The avant-gardes of the 20th century—Cubists, Surrealists, Expressionists—judged him too decorative, too Victorian. For decades, his canvases were relegated to museum storerooms, or worse, sold for a few pounds at auction.

But from the 1990s onward, something changed. Postmodernists rediscovered his work, fascinated by his blend of archaeological precision and pure fantasy. Filmmakers drew from his visual repertoire. Interior designers rehabilitated his marble and mosaic motifs. Today, his canvases fetch staggering sums—The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra sold for £20.7 million in 2011.

Why this resurgence? Perhaps because Alma-Tadema captured something timeless: the desire to escape reality. His canvases are not windows onto the past, but doors to the imagination. They remind us that art, sometimes, does not need depth to move. It only needs to be beautiful.

And perhaps that is the most valuable lesson of his work: in an increasingly complex world, there remains a place for pure beauty, for dreams, for those moments when time seems to stand still. Like in an Alma-Tadema canvas, where marbles gleam, roses fall in silence, and antiquity is nothing more than a pretext for celebrating light.