beside the easel

Death of Cleopatra, ca.1659 Born on January 19, 1601 near Rimini, Italy, Guido Cagnacci was a Baroque painter from the Forlì school and also the Bolognese School , whose contemporaries include Guido Reni , Domenichino , Guercino, and Lionello Spada among others. Considered odd and unreliable, it is unfortunate because his work represents a rare vision on the sensuality of women at a time when the Inquisition did not have an open mind about it. Cagnacci's work is unique from most of his contemporaries for this reason, and his women are unaffected and life-like in a way that is ahead of his time. In Death of Cleopatra we clearly see the Baroque influence from Caravaggio but here Cagnacci heightens the soft flesh with transparent shadows and bright colored drapery. The asp coils loosely around her wrist and bites the forearm of Cleopatra yet her expression is one of surrender, if not pleasure. Cagnacci groups her closest servants on a horizontal plane yet creates a confined sp...