Death of Cleopatra

Denys Calvaert was born in Antwerp but made his life in Bologna, where by 1585, the year of this Death of Cleopatra, he ran one of the city's busiest studios. The scene is the queen's final moment. Mark Antony has already taken his own life, and Cleopatra, rather than be paraded through Rome as a captive, chooses death by the asp, two faithful servants beside her. Calvaert brought a northern painter's taste for polished surface and clear colour to a thoroughly Italian subject, a blend that made his work stand out in Bologna in the years just before the Carracci changed painting there. He treated this scene more than once, and a second version of it survives in Cesena.