Cleopatra Melts The Pearl Earring In Vinegar

Roman school, 18th century

Cleopatra melts the pearl earring in vinegar

Oil on canvas, cm 121 x 92

According to the account of Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia, IX, 120), Cleopatra, wanting to show Marcantonio her total disinterest in luxury, took off a wonderful pearl earring that was adorning it and threw it into a glass of vinegar. The pearl was consumed immediately: determined to continue, the queen was stopped by the onlookers.

Metaphor of luxury reigning in Egypt, this episode was chosen by the rich banker from Spoleto Francesco Montioni for his cycle of heroines ready for feminine virtues, commissioned to one of the favorite artists of the merchant: Carlo Maratta. Now kept at the National Museum of Palazzo Venezia, the painting, from which the present takes inspiration, depicts the Egyptian queen in eighteenth-century clothes, respecting the custom of the time to the contemporary relocation of historical figures. It is known that Maratta asked his daughter Faustina, his model; the project on feminine virtues was never completed and the canvas was donated by Cardinal Troiano Acquaviva to his colleague Tommaso Ruffo di Motta Bagnara.

Became prince of the Academy of San Luca in 1664, Carlo Maratta (1625-1713) performed Cleopatra around 1693-95, when he had already fully established himself on the market of the capital. The death of Bernini in 1680 further highlighted his artistic supremacy on the Roman scene, also agitated by the demands of ecclesiastical notables who were commissioning the painter a constant number of works. The nineties met with the favor of private clients, such as the marquis Niccolò Pallavicini, and several confraternities. Precursors of the present painting, especially regarding the iconography, remain however the historical scenes of Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665)and with them the multiple portraits of female representative characters. Trained in the workshop of his father Giovanni Andrea, who was a student and collaborator of Guido Reni, Sirani attracted, as it will be for Maratta, the interests of the elite of Bologna made up of merchants, nobles and academics. Her historicist attitude led her to the service of Vittoria della Rovere first, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, and then of Eleonora Gonzaga, Empress of the Holy Roman Empire.