• In Part 2 of our Cleopatra’s Choice blogpost, authors Vicki León and Vicky Alvear Shecter join forces as “Team Viper” to argue the merits, historical and artistic, of the Queen of the Nile’s portrayal through the centuries. We’ve chosen seven portraits of the famed death scene to comment on—and argue over! Welcome to Queen Cleopatra as Rorschach blot.
Jean Andre Rixens, circa 1874.
VL: Although Plutarch describes Cleopatra as “set out in all her royal ornaments,” later artists like Jean Rixens (circa 1874) often chose to sensationalize her death. I call this one Cleo’s “most tasteful nudie deathbed scene.” The wicker shape on the floor, a discreet reminder of Plutarch’s comment about the killer asp hidden in a basket of figs. Her personal attendants servants are masterfully portrayed; a snaky object appears to
have fatally struck the woman on the left.
VAS: I like that the artist chose to illustrate this melodramatic moment. Plutarch says it happened like this: Cleopatra’s handmaiden Charmion looks “offstage” because a Roman soldier has just burst in to stop Cleo. He asks if the queen is really dead and Charmion answers, “Yes, a death befitting the descendant of so many kings.” Then she drops dead. I love that the artist assumes we know this bit from Plutarch. However, the nudity is distracting, even though it’s displayed with some dignity as compared to some of these other works.
Sir Frank Dicksee
VL: An English painter of the pre-Raphaelite school, best known for his passionate painting of Romeo and Juliet, Frank Dicksee’s Cleopatra is languidly beautiful but frozen, considering the emotion of that moment.
Her blouse is suggestively slipped off one shoulder as though the snake
had already had its lunch. In one hand, she holds a rather pathetic wormy creature. As do other artists, Dicksee is fixated on the look of silky garments.
VAS: I call his treatment ‘respectful’ (again, compared to the others). In addition, I like that she’s on a throne, the only one of this group that places her in a seat of power. The animal rug—something we’ll see again and again—however, is as much a call to her “exotic” kingdom as it is a symbol of her supposed animalistic (i.e., sexual) nature.
Reginald Arthur
VL: Now we’re entering real melodrama country. This Cleopatra by late 1800s English painter Reginald Arthur clamps a viper firmly to her breast and vamps us with a campy Hollywood pose, while her servant appears to
be practicing a diving maneuvre.
VAS: Okay, here we go—our first painting to show the queen in a moment of…um, sexual ecstasy while dying (because all women do that, don’t they?) Look, even her toes are curling! (Waiter, I’ll have what she’s having!) But let’s be real, not even Cleopatra can pull off an O-face with dignity. Which is, of course, the point. Remember, we’re supposed to be witnessing the moment a human being commits suicide in the face of devastating loss—the murder of her firstborn, the death of her husband, and the loss of her kingdom. By turning the viewer into a voyeur, we lose her humanity completely and only see the highly sexualized side of her supposed wanton nature (Augustus wins again).
Artemisia Gentileschi
VL: This lumpy, bored, anatomically impossible Cleopatra executed by famed Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi is doubly disappointing because it’s a half-hearted cliché and because Artemisia was capable of so much more—as artist and as a woman. Gentileschi was herself the victim of a sexual predator as a teen; at the ensuing trial, she became the scandalous spotlight instead of the defendant.
VAS: I’m very curious as to why Artemisia painted her in this insipid and unoriginal way. Look at what she’s capable of: the masterpiece of “Judith Slaying Holofernes,” for instance!
(http://www.artemisia-gentileschi.com/judith1.html) That work is shocking in its violence and power. Look at the women’s faces—the concentration, the determination! I wish she’d given Cleo the same ferocity. For all we know, this could have been a commissioned work in which some old fart told her to paint that “Egyptian hussy” in the buff….
Massimo Stanzion
VL: Italian painter Massimo Stanzion in the 1630s produced this compelling yet odd rendering of Cleopatra, sweatily nude in a setting that has a birthing chamber feel to it. The villain of the piece resembles a long ungainly piece of rubber tubing more than a living creature.
VAS: At one art website, this painting is classified as mythology. Good call. Because it’s purely mythical that she was blond and that she was nude when she offed herself. Most likely, Queen Cleopatra wore ceremonial or religious robes, as Isis. Worse, it looks as though she’s preparing herself for a gynecological exam—I almost expect to see stirrups in the corner! All joking aside, this is yet another example of how Cleo’s image as a “sexy beast” got expanded and reinforced over the centuries, obscuring the more complex politics and realities of her story.
Claude Vignon
VL: In this work, 1640s era French painter Claude Vignon reveals more of his own phobias than anything else, with his ghastly, drooling, phallic snake “conquering” an eyes-rolled-back-into-her-head Cleopatra.
VAS: My initial response to this painting was, “Holy mother of god, what IS that thing??” That snake is SO disturbing. Looks like it has a wolf’s head! Because of the peculiar head of this serpent-cum-snake/monster, I’m guessing that Cleopatra here is a stand-in for Eve (because, you know, she was blond too). I like the fur mantle on her lap; necessary of course because it gets so darn cold in Egypt.
Gyula Benczur
VL: Although Hungarian Gyula Benczur is technically a better painter than Vignon, he manages to convey even more leering cheesiness in his 1911 portrait of a ghostly-pale and raddled Cleopatra, bosoms in the spotlight, the better to be bitten. He did manage to show a reasonably authentic Egyptian headdress, complete with a one-uraeus crown.
VAS: The snake is at breast level, which screams: “Look here!” This despite the fact that Plutarch tells us Cleopatra had small puncture wounds on the inside of the arm. The great queen is again reduced to nothing more than a pair of boobs. The face, however, is interesting. Here she’s not her real age of 39—nor is she beautiful. She looks tired and defeated, the only glimmer of authenticity that shines through for me. The real Cleopatra was likely in great emotional pain. But once again, the bared breasts distract us from her humanity, focusing solely on her body and sexuality.
VL: These painters must not have gotten out much; their snakes are the lamest renderings of an essentially tubular creature that I’ve ever seen. Would you agree, Vicky?
VAS: And how. Still, what shocked me the most—seeing all seven paintings at one go—was how unoriginal and predictable they were. Naked Cleo? Check. Phallus-like snake in a suggestive position? Check. Cleo having an o—oh, well, you know what I mean. But seriously, none could come up with anything else? Where was the defiance? The “I won after all” look of triumph after tricking Augustus, her conqueror? The grief of a woman who’d just lost her son, her kingdom, and her dreams? Instead we get pervy pseudo-porn. I was really hoping for something more than just tit-ilation, you know?
Wow! What an amazing follow up – I never imagined my two favourite “Vicks” would be doing such an an art history heavy post
Lovely!
Trivia: Did you know Michael Jackson owned the Rixens!
Also, I wouldn’t be too hard on Artemisia – I think she was was empathising with the pain and sorrow felt by a woman history describes as being forced to commit suicide because of her involvement with men of power.
The way she has been depicted in a very glamour-less and vulnerable way makes that one of the most emotionally resonant Cleo images of all time.
Great work! You two should team up again!!
H
This was fun! Just wanted to correct, though, that Cleopatra was 39, not 29, at the time of her death. The Benczur painting, I think, does show some realism in that regard (in the face at least!).
And Hasan, I hear you on the Artemesia painting but if she was trying to show empathy, I think she failed! To me it felt as if she were lazily continuing the sexualizing tradition because the focus is mainly on her body and position, and not on her face–where we would see true anguish and sorrow. So, as much as I love some of Artemesia’s other works, this one is a dismal disappointment for me!
@Vicky – there is actually some contention over the attribution of that work – some scholars believe the work to have been planned, if not executed by Artemesia’s father.
In any event, even in the Baroque style, the depiction of facial anguish was very stylised – look at her Judith and Holoferness – such a violent event is being depicted yet their faces are like masks.
I just encountered another depiction of this same theme – one that I hadn’t seen before – posted at the Pre-Raphaelite Art blog.
Collier’s depiction is of course a very stylised one, but very nicely executed.
http://2.ly/dte8
Kind Regards
H
HI, belatedly weighing in here….Hasan, although you are the consummate art history ‘master’, I too feel that you are misreading Artemisia’s paintings…in the Cleo work, the subject appears to be sleeping. But it isn’t just that—to me, it is an indifferent, second-rate work. BTW, the characteristic I find strange about A. G. is that in the horrific killing scenes (eg Holofernes and the even more ghastly Jael and Sisera, where she is merrily pounding a large nail into his head!) the female expressions are blank, almost serene; whereas her Lucretia @ suicide and other works have powerful emotion. @ Vicky @ Hasan. what do you think?
The sexualization of Cleopatra was well-known from antiquity. We have a very possible statue of her as a nude Aphrodite, and several depictions of her as Isis, either with bare breasts, or breast-feeding Caesarion/Horus, etc. On the Dendera relief (birth of Caesarion/Horus) we even see the dead Caesar as Osiris with an erection, impregnating Cleopatra/Isis, who is depicted as a bird. So a later painting of a naked Cleopatra need not automatically be disrespectful, because she had already been depicted in this fashion in antiquity. That the paintings probably don’t conform to the historical events can be excused, because we’re dealing with art here. (The snake itself is probably ahistorical, so why get excited over the nudity?) The same goes for anatomical styles. The most interesting painting, although panned by both VL and VAS, is the one by Artemisia Gentileschi. I agree that the artistry is only moderate, but the mythological implications are profound, because she is painted in the pose of Endymion, an iconography that was also used for the dead and resurrecting Julius Caesar (almost naked as well, by the way). See an image of the relevant Buca denarius here. So, whether deliberate or not, Gentileschi actually produced the most intriguing painting of them all.
A belated ‘greetings’ to Divus Iulius and thanks for the very detailed post. I’m going to hand the baton to the other Vicky, whose cogent response I agree with completely—and moreover, is more eloquent than anything I could come up with. As Vicky responds: It sounds like we’re all in agreement that the sexualization of Cleopatra began in antiquity. She probably encouraged it in the Egyptian iconography because associating her own fertility with the Nile’s fertility, as well as Isis’ role in protecting Egypt from Chaos (Set) by helping her son Horus rule would have been seen as extremely positive and powerful in her own kingdom and beyond. Re: Artemisia’s painting, I’m pleased to learn how C’’s pose echoes the pose of Endymion. I’d not ’seen’ that before and doing so expands my understanding of what the artist have have been attempting. Regarding the fertility issue (above), it’s interesting to note that E. had 50 daughters with Selene, the moon goddess. After making that connection, I might agree that A’s painting suddenly become more multi-layered and profound. However….the depiction of Cleo’s nakedness/sexuality over the centuries became an annoying one-note song. Where was the complex human being, the definat defeated leader, the wily negotiator—as opposed to the writhing woman in the throes of death/ecstasy? Granted, in the coin you reference, Caesar is depicted nude but that’s the exception, not the rule. As a non-art historian, I look at these endless nudes and wonder—why no (or so few) other aspects of C’s personality/life/humanity depicted in art?
I also have a painting of Cleopatra. Possibly by Guido Cagnacci.