Thomas Couture (1815-1879), a history painter and influential teacher whose students included Edouard Manet, Henri Fantin-Latour and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, exhibited his monumental painting Romans of the Decadence at the 1847 Salon, where it drew great acclaim and comparisons with the work of Raphael. This ambitious ‘sermon in paint’ is widely considered to reflect Couture’s view of the corruption rampant in French society in the closing years of the July Monarchy, which would be toppled in 1848. Now prominently displayed in the Musée d’Orsay, it is viewed as an important transitional work between the art of the first and second halves of the nineteenth century. The painting’s renown is reflected in the commissioning of this etching after it by Edmond Hédouin.