Michelan­gelo di Lodovico Buonar­roti Simoni (1475–1564) was per­haps more a sculp­tor at heart than he was a painter, and thus Vasari quoted him say­ing, “I can­not live under pres­sures from patrons, let alone paint.”

It seems impos­si­ble that the artist respon­si­ble for the grand and glo­ri­ous fres­coes on the Sis­tine Chapel walls and ceil­ing often declared that he was not a painter. Imag­ine the wealth of tal­ent an artist must pos­sess to cre­ate such vivid and tri­umphant work. And con­sider that Michelan­gelo was work­ing against his own will and under the weight of self-doubt — only then can one truly begin to appre­ci­ate the unpar­al­leled genius of Michelan­gelo, the painter.

Describ­ing him­self as first and fore­most a sculp­tor, Michelan­gelo often expressed regret that he had not ded­i­cated his life fully to the art of sculp­ture. He even signed his let­ters and con­tracts “Michelan­gelo, the Sculptor.”

“Age can­not wither her, nor cus­tom stale
Her infi­nite vari­ety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed: but she makes hun­gry
Where most she sat­is­fies; for vilest things
Become them­selves in her: that the holy priests

Bless her when she is rig­gish [wanton].”

~ Shake­speare, Antony and Cleopa­tra (II.ii)

In 1887, The Graphic, an illus­trated Lon­don weekly, com­mis­sioned an exhibit of twenty-one paint­ings of Shakespeare’s hero­ines. For the Vic­to­ri­ans, who ide­al­ized the beauty and demure mod­esty of women, this por­trait of Cleopa­tra by John William Water­house, must have been a prob­lem­atic fig­ure. Here, uncorseted and unashamed, Cleopa­tra is por­trayed as femme fatale, loung­ing on a leop­ard skin, her sul­try gaze defy­ing the viewer, as seduc­tive and poten­tially poi­so­nous as the asp that bit her–and so the telling quo­ta­tion from Shake­speare that accom­pa­nied the pic­ture when the series was repro­duced: “Where’s my ser­pent of old Nile? For so he calls me” (I.v).

Repro­duc­tions were sold in port­fo­lio edi­tions the next year and again in 1896, from which this illus­tra­tion is taken. In 1889, the orig­i­nal paint­ings were auc­tioned at Christie’s and Cleopa­tra sold to a Lon­don dealer for ninety guineas. It then was lost , only to be dis­cov­ered in a cabin in the Rocky Moun­tains of Col­orado. More than a cen­tury later, in June 2003, it was to have auc­tioned by Christie’s for an esti­mated £300,000 to £500,000 but did not meet the reserve.

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