Lucretia

Lucretia was a Roman noblewoman of the 6th century BC, the wife of Collatinus. In the legend she was assaulted by the king's son, told her family what had happened, and then stabbed herself in the chest. Her death, the story goes, drove the Tarquin kings out of Rome and founded the Republic. By the 1520s she had become a favourite subject at the German courts, a heroine of chastity and honour whose story also gave a painter licence to show a nude. Cranach obliged more readily than most, and his workshop turned out dozens of Lucretias. This one stands against a plain dark ground, wearing nothing but a sheer veil and a double string of red pearls, her right hand already turning the dagger toward her own breast.