克莱奥帕特拉的凯旋

The Triumph of Cleopatra, also known as Cleopatra's Arrival in Cilicia and The Arrival of Cleopatra in Cilicia, is an oil painting by English artist William Etty. It was first exhibited in 1821, and is displayed in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, Merseyside. During the 1810s Etty had become widely respected among staff and students at the Royal Academy of Arts, in particular for his use of colour and ability to paint realistic flesh tones. Despite having exhibited at every Summer Exhibition since 1811, he attracted little commercial or critical interest. In 1820, he exhibited The Coral Finder, which showed nude figures on a gilded boat. This painting attracted the attention of Sir Francis Freeling, who commissioned a similar painting on a more ambitious scale.

The Triumph of Cleopatra illustrates a scene from Plutarch's Life of Antony and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, in which Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, travels to Tarsus in Cilicia aboard a magnificently decorated ship to cement an alliance with the Roman general Mark Antony. An intentionally cramped and crowded composition, it shows a huge group of people in various states of undress, gathering on the bank to watch the ship's arrival; another large number is on board. Although not universally admired in the press, the painting was an immediate success, making Etty famous almost overnight. Buoyed by its reception, Etty devoted much of the next decade to creating further history paintings containing nude figures, becoming renowned for his combination of nudity and moral messages.

Background

William Etty was born in York in 1787, the son of a miller and baker. He showed artistic promise from an early age, but his family were financially insecure, and at the age of 12 he left school to become an apprentice printer in Hull. On completing his seven-year indenture he moved to London "with a few pieces of chalk-crayons in colours", with the aim of emulating the Old Masters and becoming a history painter. Etty gained acceptance to the Royal Academy Schools in early 1807. After a year spent studying under the renowned portrait painter Thomas Lawrence, Etty returned to the Royal Academy, drawing in the life class and copying other paintings. He was unsuccessful in all the Academy's competitions, and every painting he submitted for the Summer Exhibition was rejected.

In 1811, one of his paintings, Telemachus Rescues Antiope from the Fury of the Wild Boar, was finally accepted for the Summer Exhibition. Etty was becoming widely respected at the Royal Academy for his painting, particularly his use of colour and his ability to produce realistic flesh tones, and from 1811 onwards had at least one work accepted for the Summer Exhibition each year. However, he had little commercial success and generated little interest over the next few years.

At the 1820 Summer Exhibition Etty exhibited The Coral Finder: Venus and her Youthful Satellites Arriving at the Isle of Paphos. Strongly inspired by Titian, The Coral Finder depicts Venus Victrix lying nude in a golden boat, surrounded by scantily-clad attendants. It was sold at exhibition to piano manufacturer Thomas Tomkinson for £30 (about £2,500 in 2025 terms).

Sir Francis Freeling admired The Coral Finder at its exhibition, and learning that it had been sold he commissioned Etty to paint a similar picture on a more ambitious scale, for a fee of 200 guineas (about £17,500 in 2025 terms). Etty had for some time been musing on the possibility of a painting of Cleopatra and took the opportunity provided by Freeling to paint a picture of her based loosely on the composition of The Coral Finder.

Composition

The Triumph of Cleopatra is based loosely on Plutarch's Life of Antony as repeated in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, in which Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, travels to Tarsus in Cilicia aboard a grand ship to cement an alliance with the Roman general Mark Antony.

Therefore when she was sent unto by divers letters, both from Antonius himself and also from his friends, she made so light of it and mocked Antonius so much that she disdained to set forward otherwise but to take her barge in the river of Cydnus, the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, and the oars of silver, which kept stroke in rowing after the sound of the music of flutes, howboys, cithernes, viols, and such other instruments as they played upon in the barge.……

节选，摘自英文维基百科「The Triumph of Cleopatra」，按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用。