Cleopatra
Benedetto Gennari
between 1674 and 1675
Bolognese by birth, Benedetto Gennari trained in the workshop of his uncle, the celebrated painter Guercino. In 1674, after some years in France taking commissions at the court of Louis XIV, he arrived in London and immediately found work at the English court. This is one of the earliest pictures Gennari painted for Charles II, who had a fondness for erotic mythological subject matter. Gennari captures the moment in which Cleopatra commits suicide, succumbing to the bite of the poisonous asp. As she rises from her bed, her vulnerable body is laid bare, and she gazes toward heaven in ecstasy. This painting was inherited from Charles II by his brother James II, which suggests that James’s consort, Mary of Modena (depicted opposite), had ample opportunity to gaze upon it, though she herself preferred to commission devotional pictures from Gennari for her chapel at Whitehall.
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven · Image: Yale Center for British Art, Public domain · Text: Yale Center for British Art, CC0