Cleopatra discovered by her servants

Artemisia Gentileschi painted Cleopatra Discovered by Her Servants around 1635, depicting the Egyptian queen in the moments after her self-inflicted death by asp bite — the dramatic last act of her defiance of Roman conquest. The subject was popular in Baroque painting as a vehicle for the reclining female figure in a state of death or death-like unconsciousness, and Artemisia's treatment shows her characteristic refusal of passivity even in death: the queen's posture suggests a deliberate, chosen end rather than passive submission. Cleopatra's famous self-determined death gave Artemisia another example of a woman exercising ultimate control over her own fate within impossible circumstances.

The queen's dying figure is rendered with warm, luminous flesh tones, the richly draped setting and the servants' reactions creating a dramatic scene of noble, self-willed death.