Félicien Rops, graveur de la décadence latine

By examining several late nineteenth-century editions, in particular the first volumes of Joséphin Péladan's La Décadence latine , illustrated with frontispieces by Félicien Rops that combine Latin inscriptions and iconic elements, this essay explores an "iconotextual" configuration characteristic of fin-de-siècle literary works. At a time marked by the revival of patristic and Late Latin, the integration of Christian, pagan and modern references in Rops' iconography provides the illustrated works with a tangled aesthetic frame, based on anachronism and religious subversion, which situate the literature of the decadence in a staggered art-historical dimension.