Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings (IA cyclopediaofpain03cham).pdf/360

Landscape and architecture painter, pupil in Hamburg of Baron Rumohr, who enabled him to visit Italy; after living several years in Rome settled in 1837 in Venice, where he met with great success, and painted many views of the city. Honorary member of Venice Academy. Works: Titian taking Leave of his Parents; Palazzo Contarini Zaffo; At Noon in Palazzo Pisani; Buffaloes drawing Marble Block through the Campagna, Schwerin Gallery; Piazzetta by Moonlight (36 times); Palazzo Guoro; Drive to Festival on the Lido; Before the Vatican; Monte Cavallo by Moonlight; Monte Circello with Procession of Vintagers; S. Giovanni e Paolo, National Gallery, Berlin. His son Friedrich, in Rome, is an able landscape and marine painter. Works: Views of Lagoons from S. Lazaro; Storm in Bay of Genoa; Harbour of Venice; Coast between Ancona and Falconara (Jubilee Exhibition, Berlin, 1886).—Allgem. d. Biog., xxiii. 435; D. Kunts-*bl. (1850), 236; (1852), 436; (1853), 170; (1856), 335; (1857), 144; (1858), 29, 247; Hamburg K. Lex., i. 177; Kunst-Chronik, xiv. 192; xviii. 765; Nagler, Mon., ii. 18, 831; Wurzbach, xx. 186.

NERO, Emperor of Rome, amateur painter and sculptor, A.D. 41-54. He is said to have had considerable proficiency both in painting and in modelling.—Suet., Nero, 52; Dio Chrys. Orat., 71, 9.

NERO AND LOCUSTA. See Locusta.

NERO PERSECUTING CHRISTIANS, Wilhelm von Kaulbach. The Emperor, clad as Apollo, is standing on a terrace before his palace, lifting with his right hand a goblet; a favourite slave, kneeling, holds his lyre, while a host of voluptuous Greek and Roman women come with wreaths and cymbals to proclaim him their god and to sacrifice to him; at his right, Tigellinus, prefect of Rome, applauds him; but serious men around him, of old-republican morals and patriotic spirit, look on with grief and anger. In the foreground, the martyrdom of Christians, whom Nero has charged with the firing of Rome. In the middle group, a man, supposed to be St. Peter, is tied head downwards on a cross, which Nero's attendants are about to erect, while some of the saint's adherents passionately kiss his face and hands. In the group at the left, a martyr, dressed in skins, is tied to a pole, to be covered with pitch and lighted like a torch, his wife raising their child to him for a farewell kiss. The central figure in the group at the right is St. Paul, who has manfully risen against the horrors, while a lictor already lifts the executioner's axe against him; others around him are plunged in sorrow; some girls point with passionate gestures towards another who, about to ascend the steps to join the idolaters, is seized with sudden shame, and endeavours to cover her nude form; the German warriors near them observe as hostile an attitude as the noble Romans above, one of them looking pensively on St. Paul.—Illustr. Zeitg. (1874), i. 9; Land und Meer (1874,) i. 15.

NERO ON RUINS OF ROME, Karl von Piloty, National Museum, Pesth; canvas, H. 15 ft. × 20 ft. Rome having been devastated by fire for six days, the Emperor goes forth to view the burning ruins; crowned with a rose wreath, bloated and debauched, yet grand in form, he stalks through the mid-picture, on the Palatine, preceded by slaves and torch-bearers, and followed by favourites of both sexes. A company of prætorian guards fill the far corner of the canvas; in the middle foreground lies a group of dead Christian martyrs, around whom are broken and up-torn mosaics, crumbling and calcined walls, and black, charred rafters. Painted in 1861; exhibited at International Exhibition, London, 1862. Bought for 10,000 florins by Count John Pálaffy, Pressburg, who presented it to the National Museum of Pesth in 1872.—Art Journal (1862), 183; (1865), 297; Pecht, D. K., iii. 220.