Woman in Agony (the Death of Sophonisba?)

Sophonisba was a Carthaginian noblewoman of the late 3rd century BC. The Roman historian Livy tells how her husband, the Numidian king Masinissa, could not keep her out of Roman hands and sent her poison, so that she would not be led through Rome as a captive, and she drank it. Here a woman collapses back on a bed, a bearded man stands behind her, and a letter lies on the floor at the lower left. On it are the letters G M A f, the f usually standing for fecit, made it.

The museum puts a question mark after Sophonisba in the title, gives the panel to Gabriel Metsu only as an attribution and offers no date. In his 2007 study of the painter, the art historian Adriaan Waiboer placed it among the doubtful works, as number B-4. It was probably sold in Paris in 1840, and its stretcher and frame were once mended with French newspaper. The Boston collector Francis Brooks gave it to the museum in 1883.