This striking oil canvas, which resurfaced on the market in a dirty state at the end of 2024, was promptly recognised by Marco Riccomini as a significant addition to the oeuvre of Donato Creti, one of the most lyrical and original painters of the Bolognese school and one of its last great masters. With its arresting beauty and numerous pentimenti, it is hard to visualize a better image than this portrayal of a woman, almost certainly a Cleopatra, to match Giovan Pietro Zanotti’s 1739 description of Creti’s obsessive quest for ‘perfection and glory:’

‘He does everything with grace and elegance.

Everything he paints breathes

Forth refinement and nobility:

He studies ceaselessly, sighs, suffers,

and falls prey to obsessions:

such is his longing

for perfection and glory:’

Creti depicted the Egyptian queen in more than one instance and with relevant compositional variations. She holds a silver vessel, a reference to the legendary episode in which the queen proves the immense wealth of Egypt to Roman general - and future lover - Mark Anthony by dissolving a priceless pearl in a goblet of wine before drinking it.

The painting features many compositional changes, so-called pentimenti. In its first redaction, the artist imagined Cleopatra’s right hand on the left, in the act of dropping the pearl in the cup. Changing his mind, he moved the hand to the right, to give an ever-greater sense of balance and – since the pearl is now hidden behind her shoulder – a more ambiguous take on the queen’s representation.

‍