The Banquet of Cleopatra

Around 1746 Tiepolo finished a great fresco of this banquet on the walls of the Palazzo Labia in Venice, and this small canvas, less than 70 centimetres across, may be one of his early oil sketches for it. The story comes from the Roman writer Pliny. Cleopatra had wagered Mark Antony she could spend a fortune on one meal, and she is about to drop a pearl into vinegar and drink it. Antony, in red, pulls back in surprise. Tiepolo painted the subject several times, and here the brushwork is looser than in his finished pictures. The drama spills out around the table. At the edge a servant struggles with a rearing white horse, a court dwarf climbs the steps, and a little dog peers over the top stair. Cleopatra sits in cream silk, her arm stretched out over the tablecloth.