Tarquin and Lucretia
Giuseppe Crespic. 1695/1700
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Washington, DC, United States
An historical tale told by Livy, Ovid, and even Shakespeare is the rape of Lucretia. Sextus Tarquinius, son of the Etruscan King of Rome, forced the Roman matron to submit to his advances by threatening to kill her and, then, to make it seem that she had been caught in adultery. Afterward, Lucretia told her family of this outrage and took her own life. Her family avenged her honor by overthrowing the tyrannical king, an act which led to the establishment of the Roman republic. Lucretia, as an exemplar of feminine virtue and Roman stoicism, was a favorite subject for baroque painters who reveled in depicting the extreme passion and violence of the story.
If Crespi's subject is classical, his style is decidedly not. He shows Sextus Tarquinius as he rushes in and forces himself on Lucretia, in his haste entangling himself in the rustling silk curtains of Lucretia's bed. The rough-looking villain has dropped his dagger and now remonstrates with Lucretia to cease her futile protest. Crespi's brush moved with great speed, and he made dramatic use of light, contrasting the luminous face of virtuous Lucretia with the sinister, shadowed profile of her attacker. Even the carved horse of Lucretia's bed comes alive, stirred by the violent episode.
More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication _Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries_, which is available as a free PDF <u>https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/italian-paintings-17th-and-18th-centuries.pdf</u>
- Title: Tarquin and Lucretia
- Creator: Giuseppe Maria Crespi
- Date Created: c. 1695/1700
- Physical Dimensions: overall: 195 x 171.5 cm (76 3/4 x 67 1/2 in.) framed: 222.9 x 201.9 x 14.3 cm (87 3/4 x 79 1/2 x 5 5/8 in.)
- Provenance: Possibly Palazzo Barbazza, Bologna, by 1739 until at least the 1760s.[1] Probably Duke Albert von Sachsen-Teschen [1738 1822], Bratislava, Brussels, and Vienna, by 1768 [as by Mattia Preti].[2] (Guillaume Verbelen, Brussels); (his sale, Brussels, 8 October 1833, no. 148, as Mattia Preti). J.J. Chapuis [d. 1865], Brussels; (his sale, De Donker and Vergote, Brussels, 4 December 1865 and days following, no. 320, as by Mattia Preti).[3] (M.A. Almas, Paris, 1937).[4] (Le Bouheler, Paris); purchased 1938 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[5] gift 1952 to NGA. [1] Giampietro Zanotti, _Storia dell'Accademia Clementina di Bologna_, 2 vols., Bologna, 1739: 2:58; Marcello Oretti, "Le pitture...della Città di Bologna", 3 vols., Biblioteca Comunale, Bologna, MS B104, in _Marcello Oretti e il patrimonio artistico privato bolognese. (Documenti 22)_, edited by Emilia Calbi and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian, Bologna, 1984: 87. [2] According to the Verbelen and Chapuis sale catalogues. Albert's drawing of the pendant listed in those catalogues as also from his collection, _Ulysses Abducting Andromache's Son Astyanax_, is dated 1768 and bears an inscription attributing the painting to Mattia Preti. This drawing was engraved in 1778 by Jacob Schmuzer: _200 Jahre Albertina: Herzog Albert von Sachsen-Teschen und seine Kunstsammlung_, Exh. cat. Graphische Sammlung Albertina, 2 vols., Vienna, 1969: 1:nos. 76-77. The _Hecuba Blinding Polymnestor_ in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, often suggested as a pendant to the NGA _Lucretia_, also came from Albert von Sachsen-Teschen's collection according to Eduard Fétis, _Catalogue descriptif et historique du Musée Royal de Belgique_, Brussels, 1864: 370. Fétis stated that the painting, acquired by the museum in 1828, was sold at the public sale of Albert's collection along with two other works by Preti bought by a Brussels collector, presumably the _Ulysses_ and _Lucretia_ in Verbelen's sale. No catalogue of Albert's sale has been located. (The reference to Fétis was provided by H. Pauwels, Conservateur en chef of the Musées Royaux, letter of 14 May 1985, NGA curatorial files.) [3] The description of the _Lucretia_ in the Chapuis sale catalogue corresponds exactly to the NGA painting; the dimensions given (190 x 194 cm) are somewhat wider, but the NGA painting has been cut down on both sides. [4] Paul Fierens, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts (letter of 3 December 1948, NGA curatorial files), refers to a note in the files of the Musées Royaux indicating that a _Tarquin and Lucretia_ measuring 195 x 172 cm was offered for sale in 1937 by M.A. Almas, Paris, who considered it the pendant to the Brussels _Hecuba_. [5] According to Fern Rusk Shapley, _Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools XVI-SVIII Century_, London, 1973: 101; and Fern Rusk Shapley, _Catalogue of Italian Paintings_, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:146. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2031.
- Rights: CC0
- Medium: oil on canvas
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