La Mort de Sophonisbe

The woman here is dying in the space of a breath, and she chose it. Sophonisba was a noblewoman of Carthage in the last years of its long war with Rome, more than 2,000 years ago. When the Romans won, she faced being marched through their streets as a trophy. The man who loved her, the Numidian king Masinissa, could not save her, so he sent her a cup of poison instead, and she drank it. Preti painted this in the 1670s, while he was working for the Knights of Malta. He had learned his drama from the followers of Caravaggio, all deep shadow and one hard light, and he uses it to catch the exact instant the poison takes hold and her face goes pale.