In this theatrical modello, whose original version is preserved at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Tiepolo deploys his full genius to stage one of antiquity’s most celebrated banquets.
Beneath a loggia with majestic columns, Cleopatra, dressed in a brilliant gown, prepares to perform her legendary gesture to seduce Mark Antony.
The scene, bathed in golden light, vibrates with a baroque energy characteristic of the Venetian master. The figures, in their sumptuous orientalized costumes, form a chromatic ballet dominated by reds, golds, and deep blues. The painter’s virtuosity manifests in every detail: the checkered floor that structures the space, the silky draperies, the reflections of goldsmith work on the table, and the luminous sky opening between the arches. The relatively reduced format takes nothing away from the monumentality of the scene.
Further Context
- “The Banquet of Cleopatra,” Giambattista Tiepolo, between 1742 and 1743
- 50.5 x 69 cm
- Paris Museums, Cognacq-Jay Museum – 18th Century Taste, exhibited Level 2, Room 6
- https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/musee-cognacq-jay/oeuvres/le-banquet-de-cleopatre
Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) is considered the last great master of Venetian baroque painting. Heir to Veronese, he brought the art of fresco and grand decor to its zenith. His ability to marry baroque splendor with rococo lightness, his incomparable mastery of light, and his fertile imagination made him one of the most distinctive artists of his time. This modello for The Banquet of Cleopatra perfectly illustrates his dazzling technique and his ability to transform historical narratives into enchanting spectacles, where archaeological precision gives way to a poetic and theatricalized vision of history.
A Modello for a Saxon Commission
The Banquet of Cleopatra in the Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris is a modello, a small-scale painted sketch produced by the artist before the final version. This study (50.5 × 69 cm) is preparatory to the large canvas of the same subject (250.3 × 357 cm) commissioned in 1744 by Frederick Augustus III, Elector of Saxony, through his agent Francesco Algarotti — the very count who also owned this modello. The large painting subsequently had an extraordinary history: acquired by Catherine the Great in Amsterdam, it passed through the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg and was sold during the Soviet art sales of 1932, before entering the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne in 1933, where it is now regarded as one of the museum’s treasures. Tiepolo treated the same subject in frescoes at the Palazzo Labia in Venice, a few years after completing the Melbourne canvas.
The Banquet Episode and Its Lesson in Extravagance
The scene depicted is one of Antiquity’s most celebrated: at a banquet with Mark Antony, Cleopatra wagers that she can spend ten million sesterces on a single meal. She dissolves a pearl of fabulous value in vinegar and drinks it. This anecdote, recorded by Pliny the Elder, runs through the entire history of Western art as a symbol of royal magnificence pushed to the point of provocation. Tiepolo made it a pretext for virtuosity: sumptuous draperies, orientalised costumes, colonnaded architecture, golden light. The Cognacq-Jay modello concentrates this energy in a reduced format where the brushwork is freer, more visible, and more revealing of the painter’s hand than in the final version.
