The Captive (painting) traveller from a hostile country. The pose of the model in Wright's first painting is the same as that used by Michelangelo when painting "The Creation of Adam" on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And the first "captive" painting was made by Wright while in Rome in 1774. After its completion he had to import it back into Britain; Llewellyn Jewitt records that he nearly imported it free of tax but a late objection obliged him to pay import tax. The debate focused on whether the sitter was Roman and it was argued that the sitter should have been
Sistine Chapel ceiling was made to rich and to poor, to mighty and to humble, to Jew and to Gentile. The Three Wise Men (the "Magi" of the Bible) who sought out the infant King with precious gifts were pagan foreigners. In the Roman Catholic Church, where there was an increasing interest in the remains of the city's pagan past, where scholars turned from reading Medieval Church Latin to Classical Latin and the philosophies of the Classical world were studied along with the writings of St Augustine, the presence, in the Sistine Chapel of five pagan prophets is not surprising. It is not