PICRYL makes the world's public domain media fun to find and easy to use. PICRYL is an AI-driven search & similarity engine. PICRYL is the largest media source for public domain images, scans, and documents. This painting, left, is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.Īn early eighteenth-century maiolica plaque in the Fitzwilliam, decorated by Carlo Antonio Grue, shows the dead Lucretia surrounded by her grieving family.The World's Largest Public Domain Media Search Engine Lucretia's suicide was portrayed in art more commonly than the rape that led to it, and Titian himself had treated the subject fifty years earlier. In Renaissance Venice, 'the Most Serene Republic,' this was a significant combination. Lucretia was seen, therefore, both as a paragon of wifely virtue and as the martyr on whose grave the ancient Roman Republic was built. Nor in time to come shall ever unchaste woman live, through the example of Lucretia.'īrutus and his friends and family vowed vengeance upon Tarquin, and the subsequent war brought about the downfall of the Roman kings. 'Though I acquit myself of the sin', she says in Livy, 'I do not absolve myself of the punishment. She then stabs herself, unable to bear the dishonour Tarquin's crime has bought upon her own family. Alas, Tarquin, that one night cost your kingdom!Īfter the rape, Lucretia tells all to her husband, Brutus, and her father. Victor, why do you rejoice? This victory will destroy you. The girl yielded, defeated by fear of infamy. I, the adulterer will bear false witness to your adultery I will murder a household slave, and people will think that you were caught with him.' Her enemy lover stood over her with prayers, offers and threats, but not with prayers nor offers nor threats could he move her. Run away? His hands were planted on her breasts, squeezing them, those breasts touched then for the first time by a stranger's hand. Cry out? In his right hand was the sword forbidding that. What should she do? Fight? A woman is always defeated in a fight. She simply trembled, like a little lamb that has left the fold and lies trapped under an attacking wolf. She said nothing: she had no voice or power of speech or thought in her whole breast. This is Tarquin, the king's son, speaking to you.' He got up, freed his sword from its golden sheath, and entered the virtuous wife's room. It was dark, and there was no light in any part of the house. Tarquin had finished his dinner, and it was time for sleep. Unaware of everything, the unlucky Lucretia prepared a meal for her enemy. He was warmly welcomed, for he was related to the family by blood. The enemy Tarquin entered the inner part of Collatinus' house like a guest. What was reported first as history became a fable about treachery and honour. The story is found in the Roman historian Livy's History of Rome, an account which was adapted into verse by Ovid in the Fasti – a long poem based upon the Roman calendar, composed in the early first century CE. In sixteenth-century Europe, the story of the rape of Lucretia and her subsequent suicide was so well known that the Paduan philosopher and literary critic Sperone Speroni could write, 'There is no one so stupid that he has not heard of her.'
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