Cleopatra

Jan Muller was one of the most sought-after Mannerist printmakers at the end of the sixteenth century. The son of an Amsterdam printer, printmaker, and publisher, he developed a style modeled on that of Hendrick Goltzius, the premier draftsman and printmaker in the northern Netherlands.

In the mid- to late 1590s Muller made eleven engravings after works by the sculptor Adriaen de Vries. De Vries was a pupil of Giovanni da Bologna and introduced the former’s Florentine Mannerist style to the court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. Muller himself never visited Prague, although he made prints after designs by various artists working for the emperor, in addition to those after De Vries. The prototype for this image of Cleopatra is lost, and the only record of De Vries’s sculpture is the engraving itself. Proof impressions of the print in which the background is blank suggest that the interior setting may have been added by Muller to create a context for what was originally a free-standing statue.


The subject is the suicide of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, following the death of her lover Mark Antony. Mark Antony had been a supporter of the Roman emperor Julius Caesar, but later came into conflict with his heir, Octavian. After a long battle, Octavian defeated Mark Antony, who then committed suicide. On learning of his death, Cleopatra decided to end her life as well. Here she sits, naked on a bed, holding two asps whose poisonous venom will soon kill her.