The Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra

The meeting of Antony and Cleopatra, taken from Plutarch and Dryden's dramatic adaptation, was one of the set subjects of European history painting, but Tiepolo's treatment of it in the Palazzo Labia in Venice (c.1746-47) is among the most spectacular. This easel version relates to the fresco cycle, which occupied the entire ground floor of the Labia family's palazzo and depicted the Antony and Cleopatra story as an oblique celebration of the Labia family's own luxurious self-image. The meeting scene — the galley's arrival, the elaborate pageantry, Cleopatra descending to meet Antony — gave Tiepolo the opportunity for his most ambitious exercise in theatrical architecture, exotic costume, and crowd management.

The composition is organized around the contrast between Cleopatra's barge — rendered in warm golds and luxuriant fabrics — and the open sky and water beyond. Tiepolo uses his mastery of aerial perspective to push the background into luminous distance while the foreground figures remain in full chromatic intensity.