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Cleopatra PDF
Cleopatra PDF
C L E O PAT R A O F E G Y P T:
FROM HISTORY TO MYTH
This tour features some of the highlights of the exhibition, giving a brief history of
Cleopatra's tumultuous life.
These vases are painted over the glaze in enamel colours against a dark blue ground with the Death
of Cleopatra after a painting by Gaspar Netscher (1639-84) engraved by J.G. Wille (1715-1808) and the
Death of Harmonia after Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre (1713-89).
Harmonia, shown on one vase in the act of killing herself, was the child of Mars (Mark Antony's patron
god) and Venus (Cleopatra's patron goddess), and so stands for Cleopatra. The other vase depicts the
discovery of the dead Cleopatra by Octavian and Dolabella. The dead woman at her feet is her maid
Iras.
The scene of the death of Cleopatra is based on Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (V.2). David
Garrick had presented an adapted version of the play at Drury Lane in 1759, but it was not a success.
Performances were given throughout the eighteenth century of John Dryden's All for Love (1678), and
this may have been how the English public absorbed the story of Cleopatra.
It was without doubt popular, as there are various medallions and figures of the Egyptian queen made
by Josiah Wedgwood and others from the early 1770s. By the end of the eighteenth century there was
a market in Britain for relatively inexpensive ceramic representations of Cleopatra, some of which may
have been exported to North America.
!
Height: 19.700 cm
Diameter: 13.300 cm (with handles)
M&ME 1763,4-15,1-2 (Porcelain Catalogue II 28)
Room 46: Europe 1400-1800
C L E O PAT R A D R O P P I N G T H E
PEARL INTO THE WINE, A
RED CHALK DRAWING
William Kent, Cleopatra dropping the pearl into the wine, Italy, about
AD 1710-1720
!
As the story goes, Cleopatra invited Mark Antony to compete with
her in providing a banquet, boasting that whatever he spent she
would outdo him. When it came to her turn, Cleopatra simply
removed a splendid pearl earring and tossed it into a goblet of wine
in front of her. According to Pliny, the pearl magically dissolved in the
wine, which Cleopatra then drank. But for the protests of the
onlookers, including Mark Antony's, she would have followed with
the pair, which, like the first, was worth 100,000 sesterces.
In William Kent's drawing Cleopatra holds an enormous pearl
towards a classical drinking cup, opening her hand so that we may
see its great size. The mood of ostentatious consumption is captured
in the queen's luxurious clothes and the voluminously draped
setting. Beside the throne, a voluptuous female figure, apparently a
statuette, evokes Cleopatra's sensuality.
Cleopatra's extravagance was one of two themes (the other being
her suicide) popular with European artists from the Renaissance
onwards. Both are drawn from the Roman view of Cleopatra, as
mediated through Antony's biographer Plutarch. Cleopatra was seen
as a powerful, manipulative and ultimately tragic queen who lost all
her riches for love of Antony.
!
Height: 364.000 mm
Width: 257.000 mm
PD 1954-2-13-5