That Accursed Lion, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1895)
I’ve always thought dead lion paintings like the above and sculptures like this one influenced C. S. Lewis’s description of the bound and dead Aslan’s presence and majesty. Note how the artist’s second name even means “Lion” in Spanish!
Gérôme is famed today for his Orientalism, that is, paintings that depict everyday life in places other than Europe — Turkey, the Levant, etc. In Orientalism such subjects were depicted accurately for the most part but had the titillation of the exotic and savage, such as a lion hunt or a slave market, for Victorian-era Europeans to simultaneously marvel at and feel superior (read: more civilized) to.
