The Most Terrifying Painting I Have Ever Seen

[82_28]

By one Jean-Léon Gérôme.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-L%C3% ... 9r%C3%B4me

How to interpret this? What I find is that his name is almost synonymous both literally and nicknamed with my given name.

How did I come across this random work? Searching for the significance of "303".

[Simulist]

The Most Terrifying Painting I Have Ever Seen

Not sure exactly what you're getting at, 82.

People preparing to be eaten by hungry lions is a terrifying thing, yes. But I have a feeling you're seeing more in this than just that.

[FourthBase]

The Most Terrifying Painting I Have Ever Seen

Not sure exactly what you're getting at, 82.

People preparing to be eaten by hungry lions is a terrifying thing, yes. But I have a feeling you're seeing more in this than just that.

Nukes? A trio, foreshadowing WWIII? Dissidents crucified?
Lions as martial law, about to feed on a sect of freethinkers?

I can see why it's terrifying.
Then again, maybe the lions can be tamed.
Maybe the crucified dissidents are just sleeping on the job, self-immolating?

Maybe the nuke-sculptures are actual, deactivated, petrified nukes.
Maybe this is a scene from a semi-utopia in our distant future.

[82_28]

The people being burned all around the stadium and the onlookers. The dude on the far left in the red tunic.

Sim, enlarge the photo to see what is so terrifying.

[82_28]

In some ways the lions are the least terrifying aspect of this painting.

[Simulist]

The people being burned all around the stadium and the onlookers. The dude on the far left in the red tunic.

Sim, enlarge the photo to see what is so terrifying.

Thanks for the clarification, 82_28.

I guess I've sort of become immune to most Christian iconography over the years, especially as I've found — incident after incident — that the most significant stories depicted in it, as in the murder of numerous Christians in the Colosseum, probably didn't actually happen.

The multitudinous historical instances of human inhumanity are quite terrifying, however.

[8bitagent]

These need to find a home at the Denver International Airport. Was expecting these to be really jarring holy shit paintings...I can post some truly terrifying avant garde paintings if you want:)

Anyways, I don't get what 82_28 is talking about, unless he went into the future and now sees these as synchromystic foreshadowing? :3

Btw is it bad that I find Dubya's painting oddly calming?

[Simulist]

Btw is it bad that I find Dubya's painting oddly calming?

No. It's perfectly understandable: while he paints, the only further violence he can do is to a canvas, not a planet.

[ShinShinKid]

I don't know, I've seen my housecat test the air with her nose like that lion on the stairs. That's the scariest thing in the picture to me, that lion's getting ready to eat. The other lion looks curious, almost majestic. The tiger looks innocent enough; but you realize -- everybody except that guy in the red cloak is dead or will be dead soon.

Do you recall the internet hoax about the twenty little persons that were killed wrestling a tiger?

Dubya makes my shit look like, oh let's say, Caravaggio!

[82_28]

What is most terrifying to me is that it was likely they lured the cats out and prompted them by the smell of burning humans. But they are not the enemies as it seems Gerome has depicted by that single man in a red tunic on the left. Yet we see fear and also a hopeless hope surrounded by people being entertained while others are terrified while other humans are being burned around them.

One theory by a co-conspirator of mine is that the guy hiding was the lion tamer. And in fact the lions did nothing as far as we know. It's the human upon human cruelty which is at question. Perhaps the lions stayed out of it. The lions didn't lash those people to the stakes nor did they start the fires in order to burn them to death alive before an audience.

Granted this is a depiction of something hundreds of years earlier. But dude seriously paints some powerful images. I'd never even heard of him before.

[FourthBase]

What is most terrifying to me is that it was likely they lured the cats out and prompted them by the smell of burning humans. But they are not the enemies as it seems Gerome has depicted by that single man in a red tunic on the left. Yet we see fear and also a hopeless hope surrounded by people being entertained while others are terrified while other humans are being burned around them.

One theory by a co-conspirator of mine is that the guy hiding was the lion tamer. And in fact the lions did nothing as far as we know. It's the human upon human cruelty which is at question. Perhaps the lions stayed out of it. The lions didn't lash those people to the stakes nor did they start the fires in order to burn them to death alive before an audience.

Granted this is a depiction of something hundreds of years earlier. But dude seriously paints some powerful images. I'd never even heard of him before.

Ah, now I see why it could be terrifying, for real.

[8bitagent]

I don't know, I've seen my housecat test the air with her nose like that lion on the stairs. That's the scariest thing in the picture to me, that lion's getting ready to eat. The other lion looks curious, almost majestic. The tiger looks innocent enough; but you realize -- everybody except that guy in the red cloak is dead or will be dead soon.

Do you recall the internet hoax about the twenty little persons that were killed wrestling a tiger?

Dubya makes my shit look like, oh let's say, Caravaggio!

I see two red cloaked guys(I think)

Here's a good one for ya...

[Asta]

"The Last Prayers of the Christian Martyrs".

Caligula used Christians as human torches to light up his palace. The odor could only have been horrific, but the stench of Rome must have permeated everything. I guess people were inured to it all.

What is terrifying is the concept (and practice) that torture and cruelty was, and still is, entertainment for a certain percentage of humanity.

Entertainment.

And what is sad is that what we call Christians today bear little resemblance to the first believers. So much for Love Thy Neighbor.

[82_28]

I see two red cloaked guys(I think)]

Ah yes, there are two red cloaked guys. The one in the crowd is holding a long stick and you can see he uses that stick to light the bundle of wood underneath those crucified.

[82_28]

Oh, another thing I noticed is that at first I thought the crucified people on the far right foreground had already been burned because of all the black on their bodies. Dawned on me that they've been smeared in some kind of a flame propellant like maybe tar or something. Also, to make it even more terrifying, it's use could have been to not only facilitate in the burning but to prolong the time in which they finally expire in agony. They were just the last of the people to have been gotten to by the second red hooded guy with the flame starting stick.

Awful.