Lucretia

Lucretia is small enough to hold, a panel about the size of a sheet of paper, and Manuel painted it in 1517 to look less like an oil than a fine drawing in silver light on a dark ground. The subject is the Roman noblewoman Lucretia, who, after she was assaulted by a king's son, told her family, made them swear revenge and then killed herself with a dagger. Her death, in the old Roman telling, drove the city to drive out its kings and found the Republic. Manuel gives none of that aftermath, only the single private instant of the blade going in, her body turned toward us in the dark.