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Paintings

A Roman Second-style painting in the House of Marcus Fabius Rufus at Pompeii, Italy, depicting Cleopatra VII as Venus Genetrix and her son Caesarion as a cupid, mid-1st century BC

In the House of Marcus Fabius Rufus at Pompeii, Italy a mid-1st century BC Second-Style wall painting of the goddess Venus holding a cupid near massive temple doors is most likely a depiction of Cleopatra VII as Venus Genetrix with her son Caesarion. The commission of the painting most likely coincides with the erection of the Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum of Caesar in September 46 BC, where Julius Caesar had a gilded statue erected depicting Cleopatra. This statue likely formed the basis of her depictions in both sculpted art as well as this painting at Pompeii. The woman in the painting wears a royal diadem over her head and is strikingly similar in appearance to the Vatican Cleopatra bust, which bears possible marks on the marble of its left cheek where a cupid's arm may have been torn off. The room with the painting was walled off by its owner, perhaps in reaction to the execution of Caesarion in 30 BC by order of Octavian, when public depictions of Cleopatra's son would have been unfavorable with the new Roman regime. Behind her golden diadem crowned with a red jewel is a translucent veil with crinkles that suggest the 'melon' hairstyle favored by the queen. Her ivory-white skin, round face, long aquiline nose, and large round eyes were features common in both Roman and Ptolemaic depictions of deities. Roller affirms that "there seems little doubt that this is a depiction of Cleopatra and Caesarion before the doors of the Temple of Venus in the Forum Julium and, as such, it becomes the only extant contemporary painting of the queen."

A steel engraving published by John Sartain in 1885 depicting the now lost painted death portrait of Cleopatra VII (left), an encaustic painting discovered in the ancient Roman ruins of the Egyptian Temple of Serapis at Hadrian's Villa (in Tivoli, Lazio) in 1818; she is seen here wearing the knotted garment of Isis (corresponding with Plutarch's description of her wearing the robes of Isis), as well as the radiant crown of the Ptolemaic rulers such as Ptolemy V (pictured to the right in a golden octodrachm minted in 204–203 BC).

Another painting from Pompeii, dated to the early 1st century AD and located in the House of Giuseppe II, contains a possible depiction of Cleopatra VII with her son Caesarion, both wearing royal diadems while she reclines and consumes poison in an act of suicide. The painting was originally thought to depict the Carthaginian noblewoman Sophonisba, who towards the end of the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) drank poison and committed suicide at the behest of her lover Masinissa, King of Numidia. Arguments in favor of it depicting Cleopatra include the strong connection of her house with that of the Numidian royal family, Masinissa and Ptolemy VIII having been associates and Cleopatra's own daughter marrying the Numidian prince Juba II. Sophonisba was also a more obscure figure when this painting was made, while Cleopatra's suicide was far more famous. An asp is absent from the painting, but many Romans held the view that she received poison in another manner than a venomous snakebite. A set of double doors on the rear wall of the painting, positioned very high above the people in it, suggests the described layout of Cleopatra's tomb in Alexandria. A male servant holds the mouth of an artificial Egyptian crocodile (possibly an elaborate tray handle), while another man standing by is dressed as a Roman.

In 1818 a now lost encaustic painting was discovered in the Temple of Serapis at Hadrian's Villa near Tivoli, Lazio, Italy that depicted Cleopatra committing suicide with an asp biting her bare chest. A chemical analysis performed in 1822 confirmed that the medium for the painting was composed of one-third wax and two-thirds resin. The thickness of the painting over Cleopatra's bare flesh and her drapery were reportedly similar to the paintings of the Fayum mummy portraits. A steel engraving published by John Sartain in 1885 depicting the painting as described in the archaeological report shows Cleopatra wearing authentic clothing and jewelry of Egypt in the late Hellenistic period, as well as the radiant crown of the Ptolemaic rulers, as seen in their portraits on various coins minted during their respective reigns. After Cleopatra's suicide, Octavian commissioned a painting to be made depicting her being bitten by a snake, parading this image in her stead during his triumphal procession in Rome. The portrait painting of Cleopatra's death was ostensibly taken from Rome along with the bulk of artworks and treasures used by Emperor Hadrian to decorate his private villa, where it was found in an Egyptian temple.

Portland Vase

Xem thêm thông tin: Portland Vase

Possible depiction of Mark Antony being lured by Cleopatra VII, straddling a serpent, while Anton looks on and Eros flies above

The Portland Vase, a Roman cameo glass vase dated to the Augustan period and located in the British Museum, includes a possible depiction of Cleopatra with Mark Antony. In this interpretation, Cleopatra can be seen grasping Antony and drawing him towards her while a serpent (i.e. the asp) rises between her legs, Eros floats above, and Anton, the alleged ancestor of Antonian family, looks on in despair as his descendant Antony is led to his doom. The other side of the vase perhaps contains a scene of Octavia Minor, abandoned by her husband Antony but watched over by her brother, the emperor Augustus. The vase would thus have been created no earlier than 35 BC, when Antony sent his wife Octavia back to Italy and stayed with Cleopatra in Alexandria.

Native Egyptian art

Xem thêm thông tin: Portraiture in ancient Egypt và Reign of Cleopatra VII § Egypt under the monarchy of Cleopatra

Cleopatra VII and her son Caesarion at the Temple of Dendera

The Bust of Cleopatra in the Royal Ontario Museum represents a bust of Cleopatra in the Egyptian style. Dated to the mid-1st century BC, it is perhaps the earliest depiction of Cleopatra as both a goddess and ruling pharaoh of Egypt. This sculpture also has pronounced eyes that share similarities with Roman copies of Ptolemaic sculpted works of art. The Dendera Temple complex near Dendera, Egypt, contains Egyptian-style carved relief images along the exterior walls of the Temple of Hathor depicting Cleopatra and her young son Caesarion as a grown adult and ruling pharaoh making offerings to the gods. Augustus had his name inscribed there following the death of Cleopatra. A large Ptolemaic black basalt statue measuring 41 in (1.04 m) in height, located now at the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg, Russia, is thought to represent Arsinoe II, wife of Ptolemy II, but recent analysis has indicated that it could depict her descendant Cleopatra VII due to the three uraei adorning her headdress, an increase from the two used by Arsinoe II to symbolize her rule over Lower and Upper Egypt. The woman in the basalt statue also holds a divided, double cornucopia (dikeras), which can be seen on coins of both Arsinoe II and Cleopatra VII. In his Kleopatra und die Caesaren (2006), Bernard Andreae contends that this basalt statue, like other idealized Egyptian portraits of the queen, does not contain realistic facial features and hence adds little to the knowledge of her appearance. Adrian Goldsworthy writes that, despite these representations in native Egyptian art, Cleopatra would have only dressed as a native "perhaps for certain rites" and instead would usually dress as a Greek monarch, which would include the Greek headband seen in her Greco-Roman busts.

Medieval and Early Modern reception

Xem thêm thông tin: Medieval art, Medieval literature, Renaissance art, Renaissance literature, và Early Modern literature

The Banquet of Cleopatra, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1744, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

In modern times Cleopatra has become an icon of popular culture, a reputation shaped by theatrical dramas dating back to the Renaissance as well as visual arts, such as paintings and films. This material largely surpasses the scope and size of existent historiographic literature about her from Classical Antiquity and has made a greater impact on the general public's view of Cleopatra than the latter. The 14th-century English poet Chaucer, in The Legend of Good Women, contextualized Cleopatra for the Christian world of the Middle Ages. His depiction of Cleopatra and Antony, her shining knight engaged in courtly love, has been interpreted in modern times as being either playful or misogynyistic satire. However, Chaucer highlighted Cleopatra's relationships with only two men as hardly the life of a seductress and wrote his works partly in reaction to the negative depiction of Cleopatra in De Mulieribus Claris and De Casibus Virorum Illustrium by the 14th-century Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio. The Renaissance humanist Bernardino Cacciante, in his 1504 Libretto apologetico delle donne, was the first Italian to defend the reputation of Cleopatra and criticize the perceived moralizing and misogyny in Boccaccio's works. Works of Arabic, Islamic historiography covered the reign of Cleopatra, such as the 10th-century AD Meadows of Gold by Al-Masudi, although his work erroneously claimed that Octavian died soon after Cleopatra's suicide.

In the visual arts, the sculpted depiction of Cleopatra as a free-standing nude figure committing suicide began with the 16th-century sculptors Bartolommeo Bandinelli and Alessandro Vittoria. Early prints depicting Cleopatra include those by the Renaissance artists Raphael and Michelangelo, as well as 15th-century Quattrocento woodcuts in illustrated publications of Boccaccio's works. Cleopatra also appeared in miniatures for illuminated manuscripts, such as a depiction of her and Mark Antony lying in a Gothic-style tomb by the Boucicaut Master in 1409. In the performing arts, the death of Elizabeth I của Anh in 1603 and 1606 German publication of alleged letters of Cleopatra inspired Samuel Daniel to alter and republish his 1594 play Cleopatra in 1607. This was followed by the playwright William Shakespeare, whose Antony and Cleopatra was first performed in 1608 and provided a salacious view of Cleopatra in stark contrast to England's own Virgin Queen. Cleopatra was also featured in operas, such as George Frideric Handel's 1724 Giulio Cesare in Egitto, which portrayed the love affair of Caesar and Cleopatra.

Modern depictions and brand imaging

Xem thêm thông tin: List of cultural depictions of Cleopatra, History of modern literature, và Egyptomania

The Triumph of Cleopatra, by William Etty, 1821, now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight

In Victorian Britain, Cleopatra was highly associated with many aspects of ancient Egyptian culture and her image was used to market various household products, including oil lamps, lithographs, postcards and cigarettes. Fictional novels such as H. Rider Haggard's Cleopatra (1889) and Théophile Gautier's One of Cleopatra's Nights (1838) depicted the queen as a sensual and mystic Easterner, while the Egyptologist Georg Ebers' Cleopatra (1894) was more grounded in historical accuracy. The French dramatist Victorien Sardou and Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw produced plays about Cleopatra, while burlesque shows such as F. C. Burnand's Antony and Cleopatra offered satirical depictions of the queen connecting her and the environment she lived in with the modern age. Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra was considered canonical by the Victorian era. Its popularity led to the perception that the 1885 painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema depicted the meeting of Antony and Cleopatra on her pleasure barge in Tarsus, although Alma-Tadema revealed in a private letter that it depicts a subsequent meeting of theirs in Alexandria. In his (unfinished) 1825 short story Egyptian Nights, Alexander Pushkin popularized the largely-ignored claims of 4th-century Roman historian Sextus Aurelius Victor that Cleopatra prostituted herself to men who paid for sex with their lives. Cleopatra also became appreciated outside the Western world and Middle East, as the Qing-dynasty Chinese scholar Yan Fu (1854–1921) wrote an extensive biography about her.

Ancestry

Left: a Hellenistic bust of Ptolemy I, now in the Louvre, Paris
Right: a bust of Seleucus I Nicator, a Roman copy of a Greek original, from the Villa of the Papyri (Herculaneum), now in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples

Cleopatra VII belonged to the Macedonian Greek dynasty of the Ptolemies, their European origins traced back to northern Greece. Through her father Ptolemy XII Auletes she was a descendant of two prominent companions of Alexander the Great of Macedon, including the general Ptolemy I, founder of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, and Seleucus I Nicator, the Macedonian Greek founder of the Seleucid Empire of West Asia. While Cleopatra's paternal line can be traced through her father, the identity of her mother is unknown. She may have been the daughter of Cleopatra VI Tryphaena (also known as Cleopatra V Tryphaena), the cousin-wife or sister-wife of Ptolemy XII.

Cleopatra I was the only member of the Ptolemaic dynasty known for certain to have introduced some non-Greek ancestry, being a descendant of Apama, the Sogdian Persian wife of Seleucus I. It is generally believed that the Ptolemies did not intermarry with native Egyptians. Michael Grant asserts there is only one known Egyptian mistress of a Ptolemy and no known Egyptian wife of a Ptolemy, further arguing Cleopatra probably had not a drop of Egyptian blood in her and "would have described herself as Greek." Stacy Schiff writes that Cleopatra was a Macedonian Greek with some Persian ancestry, arguing that it was rare for the Ptolemies to have an Egyptian mistress. Roller speculates that Cleopatra could have been the daughter of a half-Macedonian-Greek, half-Egyptian woman belonging to a family of priests dedicated to Ptah (a hypothesis not generally accepted in scholarship about Cleopatra), but contends that whatever Cleopatra's ancestry, she valued her Greek Ptolemaic heritage the most.

Claims that Cleopatra was an illegitimate child never appeared in Roman propaganda against her. Strabo was the only ancient historian who claimed that Ptolemy XII's children born after Berenice IV, including Cleopatra VII, were illegitimate. Cleopatra V (or VI) was expelled from the court of Ptolemy XII in late 69 BC, a few months after the birth of Cleopatra VII, while Ptolemy XII's three younger children were all born during the absence of his wife. The high degree of inbreeding among the Ptolemies is also illustrated by Cleopatra's immediate ancestry, of which a reconstruction is shown below. The family tree given below also lists Cleopatra V, Ptolemy XII's wife, as a daughter of Ptolemy X and Berenice III, which would make her a cousin of her husband Ptolemy XII, but she could have been a daughter of Ptolemy IX, which would have made her a sister-wife of Ptolemy XII instead. The confused accounts in ancient primary sources have also led scholars to number Ptolemy XII's wife as either Cleopatra V or Cleopatra VI, the latter of whom may have actually been a daughter of Ptolemy XII and which some use as an indication that Cleopatra V had died in 69 BC rather than reappearing as a co-ruler with Berenice IV in 58 BC (during Ptolemy XII's exile in Rome).

Ptolemy V Epiphanes

Cleopatra I

Ptolemy VI Philometor

Cleopatra II

Ptolemy VIII Physcon

Cleopatra III

Cleopatra II Selene

Ptolemy IX Lathyros

Cleopatra IV

Ptolemy X Alexander I

Berenice III

Cleopatra V

Ptolemy XII Auletes

Cleopatra VII