The Banquet of Cleopatra

The Banquet of Cleopatra is a painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo completed in 1744. It is now in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.

The subject of the painting is a supposed historical banquet, hosted by Cleopatra for Marc Antony, and described by both Pliny's Natural History (9.58.119–121) and Plutarch's Lives (Antony 25.36.1). During this banquet Cleopatra takes an expensive pearl and dissolves it in her wine, prior to imbibing the drink.

This is the first of three large paintings of the subject by Tiepolo. In addition to these, the much smaller oil studies or modelli for each of the larger paintings survive.

Tiepolo returned to the subject a few years later at the Palazzo Labia in Venice with his frescoes on the theme of Mark Antony and Cleopatra: the Banquet was paired with a Meeting of Cleopatra and Mark Antony and surrounding scenes of gods and attendants. T…

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