Das Gastmahl der Kleopatra

Tiepolo painted this in Venice in 1743, for a buyer he never met. Francesco Algarotti, a Venetian connoisseur working as a picture agent for the court of Saxony in Dresden, coaxed him into finishing it for the Elector. The scene comes from Pliny: Cleopatra has bet Mark Antony she can spend a fortune on a single meal, and she is about to win by dropping one of her pearl earrings into a glass of vinegar to dissolve and drink it. Tiepolo dressed the Egyptian court in the silks and marble of 18th-century Venice, the world he actually knew. In 1764 Catherine the Great bought the picture for the Hermitage, and it stayed in Russia until the Soviets sold it in the 1930s. It has hung in Melbourne since 1933.