Tarquin et Lucrèce

Titian was an old man when he took up this brutal subject; by the early 1570s he was into his 80s and still working. The story is Roman: Sextus Tarquinius forces himself on Lucretia at knifepoint, a crime that, in the legend, brought down Rome's kings and ushered in the Republic. Titian painted the worst instant of it, the dagger raised. He made more than one version. The fully autograph canvas he sent to Philip II of Spain is now in Cambridge. This closely related picture in Bordeaux is generally regarded as coming from his workshop. Even here the paint is worked wet and rough, the way he handled everything in his last years.