Sophonisba Drinking the Poison

Sophonisba was a Carthaginian noblewoman, daughter of the general Hasdrubal and wife of the Numidian king Syphax. When Syphax was defeated in 203 BC, his rival Masinissa, an ally of Rome, took her and married her that same day. Scipio, the Roman commander, claimed her as a prisoner of Rome. The historian Livy tells how Masinissa then sent her a cup of poison, so that she would not fall alive into Roman hands. She accepted it, Livy writes, as a wedding gift, and said she would have died better had she not married at her own funeral.

Giovanni Francesco Caroto shows her with the cup in her hand. The museum notes that the picture follows a model by the Lombard painter Giampietrino, yet its smooth, polished classicism makes it seem a work outside time. The city's museum bought it in 1882.