TIEPOLO -- STORIA DI ROMA -- Marcantonio e Cleopatra -- PALAZZO LABIA

Speranza

TIEPOLO dedicates the ceilings to mythology; the walls to the real history of Rome.

For the MARCANTONIO episode he uses PLUTARCO, "Vita di Marcantonio".

TIEPOLO first paints the MEETING between ANTONIO and CLEOPATRA and the banquet during which CLEOPATRA , wanting to astonish the Roman general with an exhibition of her exceptional wealth, dissolves a priceless pearl earring in vinegar.

THE MEETING of ANTONIO e CLEOPATRA takes place in the port of ALESSANDRIA.

Here, ANTONIO disembarks from his gilded ship to reach CLEOPATRA, who awaits him at the foot of the wooden gangplank that seems almost to link the fictional space of the fresco to the real space of the room.

BEHIND ANTONIO, the defeated Armenian king ARTAVASD, in chains, also descends, preceded by a blond page dressed in blue, holding a cushion upon which the captured king's crown rests, exhibited as a war trophy.

Roman and Eastern soldiers, a Moorish page with a greyhound, and other characters line the victorious general's path.

But there is no doubt that the true protagonist of the scene is CLEOPATRA, a radiant beauty dressed as a sixteenth-century Venetian grand dame, who graciously allows ANTONIO to hold her hand.

In a preparatory sketch, ANTONIO is seen in the very act of kissing her hand.

The modification to the gesture in the final version reinforces the centrality of the figure of CLEOPATRA.

Other figures appear on the loggias that open up to the sides of the main scene.

At the left, two women from Cleopatra's court exhibit their beauty, observed by a gray horse.

Opposite them, next to a man in a turban who is lifting an amphora, a dandy decked out in eighteenth-century garments is showin in profile gazing intently at the principal scene.

The latter is a portrait of the client:

PAOLO ANTONIO LABIA.

He had summoned TIEPOLO to to renovate the decoration of the ballroom in his palace.