Pollice Verso

Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." The range of his works includes historical paintings, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits, and other subjects. Gérôme is considered among the most important painters from the academic period and was, with Meissonier and Cabanel, one of "the three most successful artists of the Second Empire".

Pollice Verso is an 1872 painting by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme, featuring the eponymous Roman gesture directed to the winning gladiator.