The Rape of Lucretia

The Rape of Lucretia by the Master of Marradi, now in the Metropolitan Museum, is the companion panel to The Funeral of Lucretia, together forming a narrative diptych likely made as cassone or spalliera decoration for a Florentine patrician household around 1500. The subject was drawn from Livy's account of Sextus Tarquinius's violation of the chaste noblewoman Lucretia — an event that, according to Roman legend, precipitated the overthrow of the Tarquin kings and the founding of the Roman Republic. For Florentine humanists, Lucretia embodied the supreme exemplar of feminine virtue and republican liberty. Such decorative panels were intended to instruct household members, particularly brides, in classical models of virtue and civic responsibility, embedding political philosophy within domestic furnishing.

The Master of Marradi employs the standard cassone compositional language: figures arranged in a horizontal frieze across a shallow pictorial space, with narrative clarity prioritized over illusionistic depth. The palette is warm and relatively bright, appropriate to decorative furniture painting, and figures are rendered with a simplified but expressive linearity suited to storytelling at close range.