Joseph-Noël Sylvestre (1847–1926) was a French artist, notable for his studies of classic scenes from antiquity. He was born in
Béziers in South-West France on 24 June 1847, training as an artist first in
Toulouse under
Thomas Couture, then at the
École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under
Alexandre Cabanel. He was an exponent of the romantic
Academic art style, also known as
art pompier (fireman's art), examples of which are the
Death of Seneca (1875),
The Gaul Ducar decapitates the Roman general Flaminius at the Battle of Trasimene (1882),
The Sack of Rome by the barbarians in 410 (1890) and
François Rude working on the Arc de Triomphe (1893).