Provenance

Duke Albert von Sachsen-Teschen

1738 - 1822

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A woman struggles against a man who grips her shoulder to push her back onto a canopied bed in this vertical painting. Both people have pale skin. Bright light coming from our left illuminates the pair and the bed, while the area beyond is in deep shadow, creating a black background. To our left, the man faces the woman so we see him in profile facing our right, though much of his face is in shadow. He wears a silver breastplate over a white and gold tunic, which has a lion’s face on the sleeve facing us. His thin, gold crown blends into his chestnut-brown hair and a golden-yellow cape slips off his shoulders. He raises his right index finger to his lips as he thrusts his right leg between the woman’s legs, as if striding toward her. The woman’s torso twists away from the man, toward us, and she braces her left hand, to our right, against the bed. She stretches her other arm up to the man’s forehead, her fingers grasping at his hair and coronet. Her face and honey-brown eyes turn up, and her pale pink lips are parted. Her slate-blue gown is torn at the neckline, exposing part of her left breast. Her blond hair is pulled back behind her neck, and dots of pale yellow suggest flower petals or jewels around her temples. The twisting, copper-brown curtains of the bed frame the scene and pool around a gilded, carved horse that decorates the corner of the bedstead, in the lower right corner of the painting. A partly unsheathed sword and a white flower with torn petals lie on the floor near the sandaled feet of the man and woman.
Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Tarquin and Lucretia, c. 1695/1700, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.30

Tarquin and Lucretia

Giuseppe Maria Crespi · c. 1695/1700 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1952.5.30