The Mortally wounded Mark Anthony with Cleopatra 1823 - 1825

Louis Moritz painted ‘The Mortally Wounded Mark Anthony with Cleopatra’ in oil on canvas. It’s hard to put a precise date on it, but it was probably made in the first half of the 19th century. Moritz uses visual codes to create meaning from historical associations. Consider the setting: the opulence of the room, the dress and ornamentation of Cleopatra, and the tender ministrations of her handmaidens. Moritz painted this in the Netherlands, at a time when its cultural institutions were closely modelled on those in France. Although the French Revolution had happened a generation before, the artistic establishment remained conservative, taking inspiration from the classical world. The point wasn’t to critique contemporary society, but to ennoble it. To understand this painting better, you might look into the historical context of the Dutch art world in the early 1800s. It’s in understanding this social and institutional context that the meaning of this painting becomes clearer.