The Death of Seneca

In the year 65 the emperor Nero ordered his former tutor, the philosopher Seneca, to kill himself, after a failed plot against his life. The Roman historian Tacitus tells how the philosopher opened his veins and, as his strength ebbed, called for scribes and dictated his last words. Giordano stages exactly that. Seneca, old, bald and stripped to the waist, sinks back into the arms of his friends while a young man holds his foot over a stone basin. All around him men lean in with pens and notebooks, taking down what he says, and one raises a hand in alarm. The Louvre dates the canvas only to the last quarter of the 17th century. It hangs in Room 717 of the Denon wing, a room given over to the Neapolitan painter Salvator Rosa.