The Death of Lucretia

When Cosimo II died in 1621, his widow Maria Maddalena of Austria became co-regent of Tuscany for their young son and turned the Villa del Poggio Imperiale, on the hill above Florence, into her own residence. For its audience hall she ordered a set of four women from antiquity, each held up as a model of virtue, and Lucretia was one of them. In the old Roman story she was a noblewoman who took her own life after she was raped by a king's son, and the outrage that followed brought down the monarchy and started the Republic. Rustichino paints the final moment of that story. The four canvases appear together in the villa's inventory of 1625.