Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 'After the Audience', 1879

The key figure in this painting’s narrative is Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (63?‒12 BC), general, statesman, architect and close friend to Augustus Caesar, who reigned as the first Roman Emperor from 27 BC. Agrippa moves up the stairs of his impressive villa and away from the petitioners making their requests below, and the objects assembled on the landing. The details of the image are painstakingly represented, from the dramatic fall of Agrippa’s red cape, the wide expanses of marble, to the objects laid over the tiger skin. The crowd of people on the right demonstrate the artist’s abilities in capturing variations of emotion. The sculpture of Augustus, which represents imperial power and authority, dominates the foreground. It was based on the now-celebrated ‘Augustus of Prima Porta’, which had only been rediscovered in 1863. This underscores Alma-Tadema’s desire for his work to be current and historically accurate.

The arm of the statue gestures above the offerings and draws the viewer’s eye to the atrium above where the soldiers, or servants, hold fasces. These were bundles of sticks bound together with an axe head protruding. It was a symbol of Ancient Rome that had survived into the modern world, as a representation of collective power, law, and governance. In the distance the visible blue sky indicates the open nature of the villa.

This painting was created to impress Sir William Armstrong, a wealthy Newcastle engineer and industrialist, who had admired Alma-Tadema’s earlier work An Audience with Agrippa when it was exhibited to great acclaim at the Royal Academy in 1876. Rather than repeat the composition, the artist chose to represent the moment at the end of the ‘audience’ with the figure of Agrippa walking up the stairs away from the landing, rather than towards it, as in the earlier painting. This later work is more complex and ambitious.

The painting was very well received when it was first exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1879.