Pollice Verso (Gérôme)

Pollice Verso is an 1872 oil painting by the French academic painter Jean-Leon Gerome, set in the Colosseum of ancient Rome. It shows a crowd of spectators, including the Vestal Virgins, turning their thumbs down toward a triumphant murmillo gladiator standing over a defeated retiarius, who raises two fingers in a plea for mercy. The painting popularized the pollice verso gesture as a symbol of a crowd deciding a beaten fighter's fate, and it went on to inspire the thumbs-down gesture used in the 2000 film Gladiator. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/