tour 14 of 14
Cleopatra of Egypt: from history to myth
William Kent after Carlo Maratta, Cleopatra dropping the pearl into the wine, a red chalk drawing
As the story goes, Cleopatra invited Mark
Antony to compete with her in providing a banquet, boasting that
whatever he spent she would outdo him. When it came to her turn,
Cleopatra simply removed a splendid pearl earring and tossed it
into a goblet of wine in front of her. According to Pliny, the
pearl magically dissolved in the wine, which Cleopatra then drank.
But for the protests of the onlookers, including Mark
Antony's, she would have followed with the pair, which,
like the first, was worth 100,000
sesterces.
In
William Kent's drawing Cleopatra holds an enormous pearl
towards a classical drinking cup, opening her hand so that we may
see its great size. The mood of ostentatious consumption is
captured in the queen's luxurious clothes and the
voluminously draped setting. Beside the throne, a voluptuous female
figure, apparently a statuette, evokes Cleopatra's
sensuality.
Cleopatra's
extravagance was one of two themes (the other being her suicide)
popular with European artists from the Renaissance onwards. Both
are drawn from the Roman view of Cleopatra, as mediated through
Antony's biographer Plutarch. Cleopatra was seen as a
powerful, manipulative and ultimately tragic queen who lost all her
riches for love of Antony.