eternity

French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1872 painting of gladiators and spectators, “Pollice Verso,” remains one of the defining portraits of ancient Rome. With its depiction of two fighters in the Colosseum, one standing and the other vanquished, pleading for mercy, it works as a paradox: The viewer is given both a sense of moral superiority over the distant past and a discreet delight as the crowd lowers their thumbs in bloodlust, demanding death. Historically accurate or not, it sets imaginations aflutter, and it alone convinced Ridley Scott to direct Gladiator. Producer Douglas Wick remembers that well. After all, it did lead…