Tanaquil

In Livy's history of early Rome, Tanaquil is the Etruscan noblewoman who reads the omens. When an eagle carried off her husband's cap and set it back on his head, she took it as a sign that he would be king. She persuaded him to move to Rome, where he took the throne as Tarquin. Later she saw a great future for Servius Tullius, a boy of slave birth raised in the palace, and when the king was murdered she steered the throne to him. The Latin couplet she points to says it in her own voice. I am Tanaquil, by my foresight I made two kings, first my husband, then my slave. Beccafumi painted her around 1519 as the companion of his Marcia, and gave her a spindle, the tool of a good Roman housewife. The panel was later moved off its original wood onto canvas.