Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (
1836-
1912) was a
Dutch-born artist, who moved to
England in
1869 and made a name for himself for paintings of semi-nudes set against classical backdrops from ancient
Greece,
Rome, and
Egypt. One of his most famous paintings was
The Roses of Heliogabalus (
1888), based on an episode from the life of the infamously debauched
Roman Emperor Heliogabalus (
204-
222).