Le Banquet de Cléopâtre

Tiepolo catches the instant in which Cleopatra, having wagered Mark Antony that her banquet would be the costliest in history, holds up the priceless pearl she is about to dissolve in a goblet of vinegar before her fascinated guests — Antony in ceremonial costume and plumed helmet and Lucius Plancus, the Roman consul here transformed into an Asiatic potentate. The episode, told by Pliny in his Natural History and by Plutarch, is rendered in the sparkling light and luminous colour of Tiepolo’s full maturity: this brilliantly finished modello of 1742–1743 precedes the great Banquet of Cleopatra in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (1743–44), and is the precious source of all the painter’s treatments of a theme that particularly fascinated him. The painting is held in the Musée Cognacq-Jay, le goût du XVIIIe, Paris.