Lucretia Standing 

Sebald Beham made this engraving of Lucretia in the first half of the sixteenth century in Germany. Lucretia was a virtuous Roman noblewoman whose suicide, after being raped by the king’s son, sparked a revolt that led to the overthrow of the Roman monarchy and the establishment of the Roman Republic. Beham’s print uses a classical story to comment on contemporary issues of sexual violence and female honor. In this image, Lucretia embodies female virtue and resistance to tyranny, a potent message in the context of the Protestant Reformation, as well as the artist’s own prosecution for heresy and blasphemy. The inscription makes clear that Lucretia chose to protect her virtue with the sword. As historians, to better understand this image, we could examine legal and religious texts from the period on crime, honor, and gender; workshop accounts relating to the production of prints; and police records relating to the prosecution of religious radicals.