Portrait of Giuliana Pubblicola Santacroce as Lucretia.

Portrait of Giuliana Pubblicola Santacroce as Lucretia from 1791, now in Łazienki Palace in Warsaw, depicts a Roman noblewoman in the guise of the legendary Roman heroine whose rape and suicide triggered the overthrow of the Tarquin monarchy and the founding of the Roman Republic. Such allegorical portrait-as-history-painting was popular among the Roman aristocracy, who valued the connection to classical Roman nobility that such identifications implied. Giuliana Pubblicola Santacroce was a member of one of Rome's oldest noble families, and the Lucretia identification asserted a connection to the legendary Roman matron that the family's name — taken from the ancient Roman gens Publilia — encouraged. Kauffmann's many years in Rome gave her deep familiarity with the Roman aristocracy whose members formed her primary Italian clientele alongside the international visitors who came to her studio. The Łazienki Palace in Warsaw, the summer residence of King Stanisław August Poniatowski of Poland, holds this portrait as part of a collection assembled during the last decades of Polish independence, reflecting the cosmopolitan cultural connections between Rome and the Polish court.

The allegorical portrait combines likeness with classical role-playing, using Kauffmann's refined Neoclassical style to present the contemporary sitter as an ancient heroine.