Kleopatras død 1800 - 1853

Curator: This arresting drawing is entitled "Kleopatras død" which translates to "Cleopatra's Death." It’s by Julie von Haffner and was created sometime between 1800 and 1853. The media employed are primarily charcoal and pencil. Editor: Immediately, the thing that strikes me is this ethereal quality. The light feels muted, almost like a memory or a scene playing out behind a veil. The shading around the figures is so soft and precise at the same time. Curator: Precisely. Haffner really leans into a style known as academic art, where history and myth are vehicles for exploring emotions. This image comes out of an important moment, both for female artists and the popularity of classical subjects, as interest in antiquity revived again. Editor: There is an intimacy, a vulnerability, in portraying such a momentous event as personal sorrow. Rather than a grand, sweeping scene, it focuses in a specific and close manner. And note how, behind the lead figure, there's a second woman, obscured, veiled in grief. Curator: It also resonates because this portrayal deviates so markedly from standard history painting of the period, because in some ways, Cleopatra's death becomes a meditation on female power, portrayed sympathetically within a social context still trying to come to terms with it. It gives Cleopatra her due. Editor: Yes! It becomes a sort of intimate elegy, more about feeling than about historical documentation. And the muted palette just strengthens that sense. What feels particularly subversive is seeing this moment framed not through the lens of Caesar, of Rome, but instead through the experience of the women in the scene. Curator: Well, yes, thinking about how female artists at this time engaged with the Cleopatra myth in their own ways really shifts our understanding. Editor: Thinking of those shades, of that atmosphere of solemnity… It makes me want to pause. There’s an invitation to really dwell on this private grief of hers, portrayed on the brink.