L'Histoire de Lucrèce

Botticelli painted this around 1500, in a Florence that had just thrown out the Medici and was trying to live as a republic again. That is really the subject. The Roman story runs across the panel in three scenes. On the right, the noblewoman Lucretia has been assaulted by the king's son, and rather than live with the shame she takes her own life. In the center her body is laid out in the public square, and a man named Brutus lifts a sword over it and swears to drive the kings out of Rome for good. Botticelli tells it as a tale about tyranny and the courage to end it, which is exactly what Florentines wanted to hear then. In 1894 it became the first Botticelli to reach America.