The painting almost immediately kicked off a controversy over the accuracy of Gerome's use of the thumbs-down gesture by spectators in the Colosseum. Title page with illustration from 'Pollice Verso': To the Lovers of Truth in Classic Art, This is Most Respectfully Addressed, 1879 department-store magnate Alexander Turney Stewart, who exhibited it in New York City, and it is now in the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona. The picture was purchased from Gérôme by U.S. It is a large canvas that depicts the Vestal Virgins signifying to a murmillo that they decree death on a fallen gladiator in the arena. The notion of the pollice verso thumb signal was brought to modern popular attention by an 1872 painting by French history painter Jean-Léon Gérôme entitled Pollice Verso (usually translated into English as Thumbs Down). What a soft, gentle heart! She rises at the blows, and every time a victor stabs his victim’s throat she calls him her pet the modest virgin with a turn of her thumb bids him pierce the breast of his fallen foe so that no remnant of life shall stay lurking deep in his vitals while under a deeper thrust of the sword the fighter lies in the agony of death.

There she sits conspicuous with the awe-inspiring trappings of her head-bands and enjoys what the trainers have produced. Then on to the gathering in the amphitheatre passes this figure of life-giving purity and bloodless piety, to see bloody battles and deaths of human beings and look on with holy eyes at wounds men suffer for the price of their keep. Virgo modesta iubet converso pollice rumpi, ne lateat pars ulla animae vitalibus imis altius inpresso dum palpitat ense secutor. o tenerum mitemque animum! consurgit ad ictus et, quotiens victor ferrum iugulo inserit, illa delicias ait esse suas, pectusque iacentis sedet illa verendis vittarum insignis phaleris fruiturque lanistis. Inde ad consessum caveae pudor almus et expers sanguinis it pietas hominum visura cruentos congressus mortesque et vulnera vendita pastu spectatura sacris oculis. Prudentius mentions the thumb gesture ( converso pollice), used by a Vestal virgin who delights in the carnage:

Whomsoever the crowd with a turn of the thumb bids them slay. To-day they hold shows of their own, and win applause by slaying These men once were horn-blowers, who went the round of every provincial show,Īnd whose puffed-out cheeks were known in every village

Thumbs up and down drawing