Octavian and Cleopatra
Anton Raphael Mengs (Aussig 1728 – Rome 1779)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1759 - 1760
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
2997 x 2120 mm (118 x 83 1/2 in)
Place of origin
Rome
Order this imageCollection
Stourhead, Wiltshire
NT 732099
Caption
Octavian is bidding the kneeling Cleopatra to rise. As told in the biography of Mark Antony in the Greek historian Plutarch's Lives (44:83), Octavianus Augustus Caesar came to pay his condolences to the Queen of Egypt after his invasion. He was nephew and adoptive son of Julius Caesar, later known as the Emperor Augustus. After their defeat at the Battle of Actium (31 BC) her ally and lover, Mark Antony, committed suicide. Mengs was commissioned by Henry II Hoare in 1759 to make a companion for his Marchese Pallavacini by Maratta. This is a pioneering work of Neo-Classicism, and has included archaeologically correct Egyptian motifs as well as a Doric portico.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Octavian and Cleopatra by Anton Raphael Mengs (Aussig, Bohemia (Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic) 1728 – Rome 1779), 1759-60. Octavius Augustus Caesar, nephew and adoptive son of Julius Ceasar, then known as Octavian, but later as the Emperor Augustus, is paying Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, a visit of condolence following the death of Mark Antony in the Battle of Actium (31 BC). He stands at the left and bids the kneeling Cleopatra, dressed in a green robe, to rise. Behind her is a couch beside which two servant girls are standing. In the background, on the right, two Romans stand beside a Doric portico. The subject is taken from Plutarch's Life of Mark Antony (75 AD).
Provenance
Commissioned by Henry Hoare II (1705 - 1785) from the artist, through Thomas Jenkins (1722 -1798) and John Plimmer (1722 - 1760) in Rome - as a companion to Maratta’s Marchese Niccolò Maria Pallavicini guided to the Temple of Virtue by Apollo, with a self-portrait of the artist - in 1759; in the house by 1761 (payment bills) and thence by descent; given to the National Trust along with the house, its grounds, and the rest of contents by Sir Henry Hugh Arthur Hoare, 6th Bt (1865 – 1947) in 1946.
Credit line
Stourhead, The Hoare Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Anton Raphael Mengs (Aussig 1728 – Rome 1779), artist
References
Walpole 1927-28 Paget Toynbee (ed.), 'Horace Walpole's Journals of Visits to Country Seats, etc.', 1760-62, Walpole Society XVI, 1927 -28 pp. 9-80, p.42 Stourhead 1785 Schedule of Pictures left by Henry Hoare at his death, 1785 Colt Hoare 1818 Sir Richard Colt Hoare, A Description of the House and Gardens at Stourhead...with a Catalogue of the Pictures, Salisbury 1800, Bath 1818, rev. 1822, no.4 Hoare 1822 Sir Richard Colt Hoare, History of Modern Wiltshire (Hundred of Mere),1822 , p.79 Stourhead 1838: Inventory of Heir-Looms at Stourhead directed to be taken by the Will of the late Sir Richard Colt Hoare Bart. with the state and condition thereof, 1838 , no. 329 Waagen 1854-7: Gustav Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 3 vols. (translated by Lady Eastlake) with a supplementary volume: Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain, London, 1854-7, p.172 Stourhead 1898 Alda, Lady Hoare, Catalogue of Principal Paintings & Drawings at Stourhead July 6th 1898 (Ms.typescript), 1898 , p.20 Waterhouse 1954: Ellis K. Waterhouse 'The British Contribution to the Neo-Classical Style in Painting", Proceedings of the British Academy, 1954, XL , p.63 Honisch 1965 Dieter Honisch, Anton Raphael Mengs, Recklinghausen, 1965, p.124 no. 249 Walch 1968 P.S.Walch, Register of Museum of Art, University of Kansas, III (No.10), spring 1968 , 'Cleopatra before Augustus', pp.20-27 S.Rottgen, 'Mengs sulle orme di Poussin', Antologia di Belle Arti, 1977 , 2nd June pp.148 ff., fig.1 Anton Raphael Mengs and his British Patrons (ed. Steffi Roettgen) exh. cat., Kenwood, London, 1993, p.26 and colour plate 24, and under catalogue Nos. 34, pp.116-17 and 52-54, pp.148-149. Stourhead Wiltshire, 1992: List of Pictures, [National Trust; Anthony Mitchell & Alastair Laing] 1992 , p.15