Artist: Lombard Master
Date: 1532
Size: 20 x 26 cm
Technique: Alabaster
A slender, near-naked female figure stands before a parapet, her pale body standing out appealingly against the dark background. Her left foot is on a snake, which in the very next moment will bite her. Inclining slightly, the woman is turning aside, her right hand resting on a richly ornamented pilaster, as if she were in need of support. The pilaster bears a red marble panel with the inscription CLEOPATRA. 1.5.3.2.PE. This is somewhat perplexing, since the subject is not the Egyptian queen who, according to legend, died of an asp bite to the breast when she failed to win Octavian, later Emperor Augustus, for herself. The woman is far likelier to be Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus. Fleeing the attentions of the shepherd Aristaeus, she accidentally trod on a snake, and died of its bite. The composition and various details of this Berlin relief recall a work on the same subject by Giammaria Mosca, today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. That work in all likelihood served Master PE Monogram as a model. It seems probable that he misunderstood his fellow artist’s subject, and hence inscribed the wrong name.
Artist |
|
|---|---|
Download |
|
Permissions |
Free for non commercial use. See below. |
 |
This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. However - you may not use this image for commercial purposes and you may not alter the image or remove the watermark. This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.
|
Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may
not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the
