ルクレティアの自害

Durer had first drawn Lucretia in 1508, and he came back to her a full ten years later to make this tall, narrow panel. The story was one every educated viewer of his day knew from Roman history. Lucretia, a nobleman's wife, was raped by the king's son, and rather than live with the shame she gathered her family, named the man, and stabbed herself, an act said to have triggered the revolt that ended the Roman monarchy. Durer shows the instant of the wound, in a cramped room with the bed just behind her, her eyes turned up toward the heavens. He kept the figure severe and still where other painters made her sensual, and signed it plainly with his monogram and the date 1518.