Cleopatra

Around 1620 Artemisia Gentileschi was one of very few women in Europe running her own painting workshop, taking commissions from dukes and cardinals who usually hired only men. A few years earlier she had become the first woman admitted to Florence's academy of drawing. Cleopatra drew her back more than once: the Egyptian queen who, rather than be paraded through Rome as a captive, pressed a venomous asp to her own skin. What sets Artemisia's treatment apart is that she painted the female body from a living model, something a woman of her time was rarely permitted. The queen meets her death by her own decision, calm and deliberate, at the centre of the canvas.