Simon de Mailly (de Châlons), 'Cleopatra', possibly 1540s
About the work
Overview
A naked woman reclines on a luxurious bed, a small pink snake wriggling through her fingers. This is Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, encouraging an asp to bite and poison her – according to some accounts, the cause of her death. Famous for her beauty and her love affairs with the Roman generals Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, she died in 30 BC after the defeat of her and Mark Antony’s forces by Octavian, the future Roman emperor.
Working out who made this painting is made difficult by the fact that the artist was a poor draughtsman and an incompetent painter, but seems to have been copying the work of a more skilful and imaginative artist. There is a strong stylistic resemblance between this painting and pictures by Simon de Mailly, who is known for creating pastiches based on paintings by better artists. The original composition may have been devised by one of Raphael’s assistants.
Key facts
Details
- Full title
- Cleopatra
- Artist
- Simon de Mailly (de Châlons)
- Artist dates
- active 1532; died 1561/2
- Date made
- possibly 1540s
- Medium and support
- oil on wood
- Dimensions
- 46 × 45.7 cm
- Acquisition credit
- Bequeathed by Maurice Woolff Jacobson, 1943; entered the collection, 1947
- Inventory number
- NG5762
- Location
- Not on display
- Collection
- Main Collection
Provenance
Additional information
This painting is included in a list of works with incomplete provenance from 1933–1945; for more information see Whereabouts of paintings 1933–1945.
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Lorne Campbell, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings: With French Paintings before 1600’, London 2014; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
Bibliography
-
1955The National Gallery, The National Gallery: 1938 - 1954, London 1955
-
1957Martin Davies, National Gallery Catalogues: French School, 2nd edn (revised), London 1957
-
2001
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
-
2014
L. Campbell, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings: With French Paintings before 1600, 2 vols, London 2014
About this record
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.