The Death of Cleopatra

This is Böcklin's earliest treatment of the death of Cleopatra, painted in 1872. The queen of Egypt is shown at the moment she takes her own life with the bite of a small poisonous snake, the asp, after the defeat and death of the Roman general Mark Antony. It is a history picture in the old grand manner, a single figure asked to carry a whole famous story, and Böcklin would come back to the subject in later years. In 1872 he was working in Munich, supplying the German art market with classical and mythological scenes of exactly this kind. The drama sits entirely in the body and the snake, with no crowd and no palace around her to share the attention.