Тарквиний и Лукреция

Titian finished this in 1571 for Philip II of Spain, and by then he was in his eighties. That fact is hard to hold in your head in front of it, because the picture has none of the caution of old age. In a letter three years earlier he told the king it involved greater labour and artifice than almost anything he had made in years, and he clearly meant it. The subject comes from the founding legend of Rome. The prince Tarquin forces himself on the noblewoman Lucretia, who will kill herself afterward and set off the revolt that ends the monarchy. Titian gives you the instant of the attack, knee driving into the bed, dagger raised, and refuses to soften the violence of it. The picture left Spain in 1813 in the baggage of Napoleon's brother Joseph, crossed to America with him, and only reached Cambridge as a gift in 1918.