Talk:The Triumph of Cleopatra

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	A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on August 8, 2015. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that The Triumph of Cleopatra depicts Cleopatra's golden poop?

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Sources permitting it would be nice to find a way to mention how this slots in between The Raft of the Medusa (exhibited 1819) and The Barque of Dante (ex 1822). Johnbod (talk) 00:29, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find anything that links them; Etty doesn't appear to have been aware of Gericault or Delacroix at this stage and vice versa. (Not particularly surprising, as more recent art would have been slow to trickle across the Channel; the war had only ended in 1815, and Etty's big European journey wasn't until after Cleopatra had been completed.) There's some suggestion that The Storm was a response to Raft of the Medusa, but that was much later. It appears that in the case of Cleopatra the similarity is owing to Etty imitating Regnault, while Gericault and Delaxcroix were both pupils of Guerin who had in turn been taught by Regnault. (Delacroix later came to be an admirer of Etty's, but that was for the "directness" of his nudes in comparison to Ingres, and doesn't appear to have had any particular link to Cleopatra.) ‑ 

iridescent 09:05, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply

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Etty greatly admired Poussin and copied many of his works in his student days. Do any of the sources specifically connect this painting to Poussin's influence? (I see it, both thematically and compositionally, but obviously it needs to be sourced. There is a discussion of Etty/Poussin in The World Before the Flood.) Also, although the article does credit the influence of Venetian artists generally and specifically Titian, could it mention Veronese, that is, if his name comes up in sourcing? He's ringing bells here, too, for me, though I'm blanking on the specific precedents. But I know it's there.

Also, that passage from Plutarch, the Sir Thomas North translation which seems also to have influenced Shakespeare: is it online? Is there any way to source/footnote it? That might help the FAC. Thank you for all your work and DYK's on Etty. I've seen very little of him in person but feel like I've discovered a new artist, thanks to all your Wikipedia scholarship. Vesuvius Dogg (talk) 03:04, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In the case of Cleopatra, I can't find any source that makes a direct connection with Poussin. Poussin was a strong influence on Regnault, who was in turn a strong influence on Cleopatra (as noted in the article); Farr makes a direct link between Regnault's Napoleon and Etty's Cleopatra, on the grounds of their unusual levels of clutter and the apparent lack of depth. Poussin paintings (and later Ettys, after his stay in Venice) aren't as crowded as this. (The World Before the Flood is equally crowded, but the figures form a single coherent unit and are offset by a lot of empty landscape; Cleopatra gives the impression of being half-a-dozen different crowd scenes stitched together.) I can't find anything specific to link this particular painting to Veronese—the only link between Etty and Veronese prior to Etty's trip to Venice appears to have been a lecture by Opie just after Etty enrolled at the Royal Academy, in which Opie expressed admiration for Veronese's colour palette. (Veronese was something of a Big Deal in England at the time, because Joshua Reynolds had been a fan and Reynolds set the tone for the RA, but Etty seems to have been much more influenced by Titian and Rubens.)

That passage from North's translation of Plutarch appears in pretty much every book on Antony and Cleopatra ever published (including as a footnote in most editions of Shakespeare), as it's the sole source for "Cleopatra set out to seduce Antony before she had even met him", which is something of a founding myth of Western culture. I've added a footnote to a version which should be fairly easily available (I prefer book sources than websites, as websites can change); anyone wanting online verification can just google "Therefore when she was sent unto by divers letters" to find plenty of confirmation. ‑ 

iridescent 08:45, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply

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