The Dying Cleopatra

The Dying Cleopatra

SK-A-2843

Around 1520, Jan van Scorel travelled to Venice, Jerusalem and Rome, and became keeper of the papal collections in the Vatican. An antique statue there probably served as the inspiration for this painting. Queen Cleopatra, the last pharaoh of ancient Egypt, committed suicide by inducing a snake to bite her. Scorel depicts her nude and with pronounced musculature, in the throes of succumbing to the venom.

• painter: attributed to Jan van Scorel
• painter: Jan van Scorel [rejected]

c. 1520 - c. 1524

olieverf op paneel

• height 36.3 cm x width 61.3 cm
• height 51.5 cm x width 75.5 cm x thickness 7 cm

A. de Stuers Bequest

bequest 1920-07

Public domain

… ; bequeathed to the museum by Mr Alphonse Lambert Eugène Ridder de Stuers (1841-1919), Paris, July 1920; on loan to the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 2004-10

To refer to this object, please use the following persistent URL:

https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/200107984