Cleopatra y el campesino

By 1838 Delacroix was the acknowledged leader of French Romantic painting, and six years earlier he had travelled through Morocco and Algeria, a journey that left him with a lasting appetite for subjects from beyond Europe. Here he turns to the last hours of Cleopatra, the defeated queen of Egypt. She has lost the war against Rome, and a peasant has smuggled in a basket holding the asp whose bite she will use to take her own life. Delacroix skips the drama of the death itself and paints the pause before it, the queen sunk in thought while the countryman waits. The canvas is now in North Carolina, at the Ackland Art Museum.