Cleopatra

John William Waterhouse is remembered mostly for dreaming maidens out of Greek myth and Arthur's court, so this Cleopatra from about 1888 shows a harder side of him. He gives her no languor. She sits forward on a throne carved with a stone lion, gripping the armrests, her dark eyes fixed and almost hostile. Late-Victorian audiences were fascinated by Cleopatra as a dangerous beauty, and Waterhouse plays straight to that, dressing her in warm golds and deep reds that read as wealth and threat at once. The painting stayed in private hands rather than entering a public gallery, which is part of why it is far less seen than his water-nymphs and his Lady of Shalott.