Cleopatra's Feast

The Banquet of Cleopatra is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Flemish Baroque painter Jacob Jordaens, from 1653. With Group Portrait (1650), The Apostles Paul and Barnabas at Lystra (c. 1618), and Portrait of the Artist with his Family (c. 1615), it is one of four works by the artist in the Hermitage Museum, in Saint Petersburg. It shows Cleopatra receiving Mark Antony aboard her barge.

The painting illustrates an episode described by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History: Cleopatra bet Mark Antony that she could spend ten million sestertii in a single meal. During the meal, she was served a cup of vinegar, in which she dissolved a huge, precious pearl and drank the contents of the cup. Lucius Munatius Plancus, who judged the bet, declared Cleopatra the winner. Mark Antony, his companion Ahenobarbus, and the black servant are frozen in amazement, their expressions mixed with dismay and ad…

摘自英文维基百科「The Banquet of Cleopatra (Jordaens)」（CC BY-SA 4.0），暂时没有中文条目。