Lucretia: The 17th Century

In my last post we looked at some 16th century art featuring the story of Lucretia. Roman History Books and More came up with another example by Raphael, which is now in New York's Metropolitan Museum. I've also found another two paintings from the 16th century: Il Sadoma's 1518 Death of Lucretia, now in Budapest's Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, but not on their website, and Tintoretto's 1578-80 Tarquin and Lucretia, now in The Art Institute of Chicago.

Moving on to the 17th century proper, the picture below was painted by Rubens from 1609-12. The painting was looted from Germany by a Russian soldier during WWII, and has been exhibited in St. Petersburg's The Hermitage and Moscow's Pushkin Museum. The history of the painting and Germany's attempts to have it returned are covered by The Guardian, Deutsche Welle, and Passport Moscow.



Guido Reni's workshop seems to have churned out quite a few paintings showing Lucretia's suicide in the second quarter of the 17th century. The one below is now in Museu de Arte de São Paulo, but they seem to be having problems with their website. At any rate, I couldn't get the picture to display. Other examples are in Rome's Pinacoteca Capitolina (not on their website), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Barnard Castle's The Bowes Museum.



1650 seems to have been a bumper year for Lucretias. The two pictures below are in private collections. The upper one is by Cagnacci, and the lower one is by Simon Vouet (image courtesy of www.simon-vouet.org under creative commons licence). Carlos Parada's website Greek Mythology Link has a picture by du Fresnoy, which is in Kassel's Hessisches Landesmuseum, whose website I find totally baffling.




Giordano painted both a rape and a suicide of Lucretia. The rape was painted in 1663 and is shown below. The painting is in Naples's Museo di Capodimonte, but I cannot find it on their website. No date is given for the suicide, which is now in Stuttgart's Staatsgalerie.



Rembrandt painted two versions of Lucretia's suicide. The first (1664) is now in Washington DC's National Gallery of Art, while the second (1666), shown below, is in Minneapolis's Institute of Arts, which discusses the painting in detail here.



Sebastiano Ricci's 1685 painting, Lucretia, shown below, is in a hospital in Parma, though sources differ over which one.



Crespi's 1695 painting of the rape of Lucretia is now in Washington DC's National Gallery of Art. (all illustrations are in the public domain and are from wiki commons unless otherwise credited)

Encroaching a little bit into the 18th century, let's finish this installment with Handel's Cantata "Lucrezia", composed around 1708 when Handel was in Italy.