Lucretia

The Bassano workshop built its name on crowded biblical scenes full of animals, copper pots and country chores, so a single Roman heroine cut off at the waist is a real departure. This is Lucretia, a noblewoman of early Rome. As the old story goes, she was raped by the son of the king and, holding that the shame now fell on her, gathered her family, told them what had happened and killed herself in front of them. Leandro paints the instant before the blade, her dress loosened at the breast, her eyes turned up and away. For the pose and the warm flesh he looked back to Venetian painting of a century earlier, above all to Titian and his Tarquin and Lucretia. The canvas came to the Accademia in 1838 as a gift from the collector Girolamo Contarini.