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Secondary sourcePaintingca. 1645–55

The Death of Cleopatra

Guido Cagnacci · ca. 1645–55

A Baroque oil painting by Guido Cagnacci depicting Cleopatra's legendary death by snakebite, made over 1,600 years after her death.

A Baroque painting imagining Cleopatra's death, a scene that shaped how later generations remembered her final moments.

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Oil painting of a woman with auburn hair in a loose braid, wearing a pink-red gown with gold trim, gazing upward with parted lips. A dark serpent coils around her arm and is held against her chest; her bare breast is partly exposed. Dark background.
Guido Cagnacci, The Death of Cleopatra, ca. 1645–55. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

About this source

What it is

This oil painting, made around 1645–1655 by the Italian artist Guido Cagnacci, shows Cleopatra at the moment of her death, with a serpent coiled around her arm. It is held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Why it matters

Cagnacci painted this scene more than sixteen centuries after Cleopatra's death, drawing on the famous story that she died from a snakebite. Baroque artists were drawn to dramatic, emotional moments like this one, and the painting shows how her death became one of the most retold scenes in Western art.

Look closer

  • What emotions does the artist try to show on Cleopatra's face?
  • Why do you think artists kept returning to this particular moment in her story?
  • What is missing from this image about Cleopatra's life as a ruler?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Cleopatra on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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