Cleopatra

In 1620 a Roman landowner, Benedetto Martiniani, handed his vineyard over to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who built this collection. About ten paintings went with the land, many of them on stone or precious metal, and this Cleopatra most likely came in that group. It is painted in oil on a slab of slate. A later Borghese inventory did not even name her. It lists a painting on "German stone" of a woman with a serpent winding around her neck and its head at her breast. After Mark Antony's death, the Egyptian queen had a snake brought to her so that its bite would kill her. Here the asp lies across her collarbones like a necklace, her spread hand rests just above it, and her eyes turn up and away. The slate is currently in the museum's storage.