Una morte profumata. Il mito di Eliogabalo e l'ambiguità della rosa nel decadentismo europeo

"The Roses of Heliogabalus" (1888) by Lawrence Alma-Tadema represents a legendary episode of Heliogabalus' life, in which a rain of flowers literally buries people during a banquet. Despite sources speak of "violets and other flowers", the painter chooses roses, probably for their reference to imperial luxuria, but also because tradition had always linked Heliogabalus and roses – as evidenced by some religious texts of the Seventeenth century – perhaps for their dual symbol of beauty and death. The paper presents and discusses a series of decadent European images, poems and novels, where the topos of rose as ambivalent symbol of beauty (and passionate love too) and death has a central place, from the rediscovery of Heliogabalus in French Romanticism, through Pre-Raphaelites and Symbolists in England, up to D’Annunzio’s works at the Great War eve.

Il contributo, partendo dall'analisi del dipinto "The Roses of Heliogabalus" di Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1888) e delle sue fonti, non solo antiche, ripercorre trasversalmente il topos decadente della rosa quale simbolo ambiguo di amore, passione e morte.