Cleopatra / Eurydice

A slender, near-naked female figure stands before a parapet, her pale body standing out appealingly against the dark background. Her left foot is on a snake, which in the very next moment will bite her. Inclining slightly, the woman is turning aside, her right hand resting on a richly ornamented pilaster, as if she were in need of support. The pilaster bears a red marble panel with the inscription CLEOPATRA. 1.5.3.2.PE. This is somewhat perplexing, since the subject is not the Egyptian queen who, according to legend, died of an asp bite to the breast when she failed to win Octavian, later Emperor Augustus, for herself. The woman is far likelier to be Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus. Fleeing the attentions of the shepherd Aristaeus, she accidentally trod on a snake, and died of its bite. The composition and various details of this Berlin relief recall a work on the same subject by Giammaria Mosca, today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. That work in all likelihood served Master PE Monogram as a model. It seems probable that he misunderstood his fellow artist’s subject, and hence inscribed the wrong name.