A monumental masterpiece of 19th-century French Academic art, which achieved sensational success at the Paris Salon of 1847. The scene depicts an orgiastic feast in late Imperial Rome, where exhausted revelers wallow in luxury at the feet of stern statues of Roman heroes who gaze down in judgment. Blending Neoclassical order with Romantic drama, Couture crafted a thinly veiled political and moral critique aimed at the corruption of the July Monarchy on the eve of the French Revolution of 1848.