Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Pollice Verso

Pollice Verso

 * Description: Pollice Verso ("Thumbs Down"), an 1872 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904). (Phoenix Art Gallery)
 * Reason:Hi-res scan of influential 19th century artwork.
 * Articles this image appears in:Gladiator, Pollice Verso, Colosseum, Hand gesture, Gladiator (2000 film),Jean-Léon Gérôme and a few others.
 * Creator:Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904)


 * Support as nominator &mdash; Spikebrennan 19:15, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose Great image, but the caption needs work. FPC 7. SingCal 20:12, 3 July 2007 (UTC) Yeah, that's great, although I think it could benefit from a bit more detail about what's going on in the picture, but in the meantime... Support SingCal 23:01, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Caption changed. Better? Spikebrennan 20:23, 3 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Support I like it. I think is is representitive of gladiator and is of good quality. -Fcb981 22:46, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I should point out that the image is probably _not_ that representative of gladiators-- per the text on the image page, the weapons are wrong; also there is scholarly debate over whether the "thumbs down" gesture really meant "kill the loser". However, the image was apparently very influential with respect to 19th and 20th century conceptions about what gladiatorial combat was like-- so I guess it's very encyclopedic with respect to Pollice Verso, Hand gesture, Gladiator (2000 film) andJean-Léon Gérôme and less so with respect to Gladiator.  Spikebrennan 00:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I feel it serves a good purpose as the main picture on the gladiator page. What you said with respect to wrong weapons and sketchy hand justures may be true but for me, having limited knowlage of gladiators, It captures an appropriate aura for the gladiator artical. As well as serving purposes for the others. -Fcb981 01:10, 6 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Support A change from the usual; illustrates the subject satisfactorily and as far as I can see, there are no major technical problems. Chris Buttigieg 14:38, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Support, with improved caption. -- snowolf D4  (  talk  /  @   ) 00:27, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * reluctant oppose I made this image my desktop background, and since doing so have noticed a lot of blocks and checkers that appear to be jpeg compression artifacts. They are pretty subtle because the painting has soft focus to begin with, but now that I have noticed them they are pretty distracting. Debivort 16:48, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose I agree, there are major tech propblems here. I've had a search about and this is a big canvas with plenty of detail, none of which comes over in this scan. It's far from high-res and seems to have lost most of its fine detail to JPEG compression atifacts. The colour balance also seems a bit off compared to the Phoenix Museum scan. It may be enc for Gladiator but it's far from being a high-quality version of the painting. mikaultalk 17:33, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose per above. The artifacts are just too bad. Look at the black square where the doorway is. There are little horizontal and vertical bars. Then look around the whole image to see more. Unfortunately, this particular file to TOO compressed. -Andrew c [talk] 17:02, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

, without prejudice to a better scan. MER-C 03:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)