Are there any paints or descriptions of Cleopatra?

Question

Are there any paints or descriptions of Cleopatra?

Answer 1

isnt it generally accepted that she was fair skinned? seeing as she was a decendant of Ptolomy*. Ptolomy was general to Alexander the Great. when he died good old P got control of the Egyptian portion of the Empire. and i doubt the Romans ever altered descriptions of her thorughout history. seeing as they were for the most part racially tolerant.

Answer 2

The most famous painting of Cleopatra is one that almost certainly no longer exists now. Because the queen died in Egypt well before Augustus' triumph could be put on in Rome, in which she would have walked in chains, Augustus commissioned a large painting of her, which was carried in his triumphal procession, and which may have represented her being poisoned by an asp. The sources for the story are Plut. Ant. 86 and App. Civ. II.102, although the latter may well refer to a statue, and Cass. Dio LI.21.3 reports that the "image" was of gold, and thus not a painting at all. A painting purported to be this work was engraved in the early 19th century: it was said to be in a private collection near Sorrento. Since then, this painting is said to have formed part of a collection in Cortona, but there no longer appears to be any trace of it; its quiet disappearance is almost certainly due to its being a fake.

Paintings, Renaissance

Cleopatra and her death have inspired hundreds of paintings from the Renaissance to our own time, none of them of any historical value of course, and most misleadingly depict her as a young woman at the time of her death; the subject appealing in particular to French academic painters.

Sir Thomas Browne: Of the Picture describing the death of Cleopatra (1672)

John Sartain: On the Antique Portrait of Cleopatra (1818)

The suicide



The Death of Cleopatra,

Guido Cagnacci, 1658 Suicide of Cleopatra. Oil on canvas. 46×36¾″ (116.8×93.3cm) painted by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, also called Guercino. Painted in 1621 and which hangs in the collection in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. It shows Cleopatra and in her hand a snake that she prepares to use in her suicide.

Cleopatra,

painted by Artemesia Gentileschi,1621-22, of the artist's Genovese period. Pictures the queen in the act of committing suicide. Oil on Canvas. Hangs in the Amedeo Morandorri, Milan.

Cleopatra, painted by Artemesia Gentileschi, ca. 1630. Oil on Canvas. Collection of Fondazione Cavallini-Sgarbi, Ferrara.

The Death of Cleopatra, painted by Jean André Rixens, painted in 1874 and that hangs in the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, France.



The Death of Cleopatra, painted by Guido Cagnacci, painted in 1658. Oil on canvas. Hanging in the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum

Answer 3

However, a version that her mother was Auletes's sister, Cleopatra V Tryphaena (it was commonplace for members of the Ptolemaic dynasty to marry their siblings), exists. Significantly, the charge of illegitimacy was never made against Cleopatra, which is surprising considering the wealth of Roman propaganda against her, which adds credence to the latter theory regarding her mother. In light of the nature of Egyptian succession, it is unlikely that her father would have named her as his heir had she been the offspring of a concubine considering she had a legitimate sister Arsinoe IV of Egypt. Finally, no Roman historian ever describes Cleopatra as black, another odd omission from the propaganda against her if it was true.

Debate about Cleopatra's skin-color and racial identity is an example of identity or cultural politics. Cultural politics rightly points out that much history reflects cultural bias which gives credit for achievement say to Europe where credit is really due to Africa. On the other hand, such politics perpetuates us-and-them polarities and misses the point of what Alexander the Great had tried to achieve, a world in which all cultures fuse within a single human civilization thus allowing all people to claim credit for anyone's achievements.