Sensing the past: sensory stimuli in nineteenth-century depictions of Roman baths

Roman baths were sensorial spaces par excellence, where bathers engaged in a profoundly synaesthetic experience. This chapter investigates how European visual artists reinterpreted the rich sensorium of these buildings in the second half of the nineteenth century. I focus on the works of Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856) and Sir Lawrence Alma‑Tadema (1836–1912), deploying Yannis Hamilakis’ concept of sensorial assemblage to illuminate the rich, diachronic contamination between materiality, memory and imagination that underpin their creative engagement with the past. I also explore the perception of familiarity or alterity that certain smells triggered in the memory of contemporary viewers, discussing the way these artists used olfactory stimuli to bridge the gap between past and present.