Cleopatra’s death has captivated artists for reasons alternately sensual, solemn, and deeply suspect.
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For many painters and sculptors over the past few millennia, the subject matter has offered an opportunity to perpetuate myths about the dangers of powerful women and render the female nude in an anguished, dramatic state. In Giampietrino’s Death of Cleopatra (c. 1515), for example, a snake (a phallic figure if there ever was one) bites the naked woman’s nipple—the painter eroticizes female demise.
Yet many portrayals of the Egyptian queen offer more than mere images of morbid sexuality. Altogether, these depictions reveal more about the times in which they were made than about Cleopatra herself.
Cleopatra was born around 70 or 69 BC to King Ptolemy XII, who ruled over Egypt (the family was actually Macedonian Greek). Drama dominated her lineage—her brother, with whom she was supposed to co-rule after her father’s death, forced her out of the country.
Cleopatra retaliated with military forces and lost. In 48 BC, Julius Caesar defeated Pompey the Great in Alexandria and Pharsalus, coups that made him dictator of the Roman Empire. He stayed in the Ptolemy palace. Shortly after, Cleopatra joined him, secretly returning to the palace from exile. The pair quickly united in love and politics, together regaining the Egyptian throne.
Cleopatra governed Egypt for 22 years, long past Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC. Her subsequent union with Mark Antony, a potential successor to Caesar’s throne, ended in mutual suicide when their contender, Octavian, defeated the pair.
Cleopatra probably didn’t use a poisonous asp to incite her death, but 15th-century artists began perpetuating that myth; Shakespeare’s early 17th-century play Antony and Cleopatra further promoted it.