Cleopatra
Ca. 1640.Room 005
Cleopatra VII (r. 51-30 BCE) was the sovereign of Egypt and the last representative of its final royal family, the Ptolemaic dynasty. Feeling that all was lost after her armies and those of her Roman lover and consort, Mark Antony (83-30 BCE), were successively defeated and the latter was killed, she chose to end her own life to avoid being captured by their mutual enemy, Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus (r. 27 BCE-14CE), whose victorious armies had surrounded Egypt´s capital city of Alexandria. In order to suffer as little as possible -the scandalous chronicle of her reign, halfway between truth and legend, alleges that she first tested various poisons on others Cleopatra called for a basket of fruit in which a poisonous snake was to be hidden. This tiny asp -probably a cobra, whose Greek name is aspic- transmitted a lethal poison through its bite. Here, Guido Reni depicts the crucial moment when the asp´s bite brings an end to Cleopatra´s life. Dressed in a white tunic with green edging, the hapless queen reclines amid red robes with her left hand on the basket of fruit and flowers. In her right hand, she clasps the serpent that approaches her bare bosom. The composition is typically Baroque; its contrasting light and shadows, acute theatricality, and play of diagonals emphasize the subject´s head as she leans back, looking upward in a pose rooted in the innovations of Mannerism but fully developed in the seventeenth century. This dramatic presentation of suffering or mourning exemplifies Reni´s manner of expressing death in a dignified and restrained manner -in keeping with the protagonist´s high status. The light colors indicate that the painting is one of Reni´s late works, with a chromatic economy that ranges from whites to greens. In his 1678 treatise on painting from the School of Bologna (of which Reni was a member), Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616-1693) observed that for the Lucreces, Cleopatras and others, he used the Countesses Bianchi and Barbacci as his models. This statement indicates that Reni made different versions of these subjects, at least of those historical figures, and that he worked directly from life models -likely people that he knew. Reni´s skillful use of light and his choice of a dark, contrasting background draw the viewer´s attention to the figure´s powerful volume and exposed torso. This handling reveals his knowledge of the chiaroscuro techniques pioneered by Caravaggio (1571-1610) and his followers, which included Reni himself at the beginning of his career. This painting does not appear in the Spanish Royal Collections´ inventories until 1814, which suggests that it was acquired by Charles IV (r. 1788-1808), rather than by one of Spain´s previous Bourbon or Habsburg monarchs. Yet, Charles had wanted nude paintings in the collection incinerated in 1792, making his possible acquisition of this work intriguing. Like his predecessors, Charles may have been motivated by various factors in his collecting of nudes, and the historical subject matter of this picture may have exempted it from inclusion in the fire. Nevertheless, there is no earlier historical data about this work, nor any indication as to where it may have hung prior to the eighteenth century (Text drawn from Luna, J. J.: Splendor, Myth, and Vision. Nudes from the Prado, 2016, pp. 152-155).
