Rape of Lucretia (Tarquin and Lucretia)
1568-71
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
This subject is taken from Ovids Fasti, in several works. Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, is raped by her relative Sextus Tarquinius, the son of the king. In order to save her honor as a woman, and also her husband's, she stabs herself to death after extracting an oath of vengeance from him. In the concise detail of this dramatic composition of the two figures, the painting has a compositional style similar to that of Bravo;, which dates from the same period. The painting is executed in part with very fine brushstrokes and great attention to the sensuous materiality of the details. Titian succeeds in depicting convincingly the purity and moral greatness of the heroine.
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