This sculpture is located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There is no charge to visit the Museum.
The Museum's website (
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"Lucretia
Artist: Philippe Bertrand (French, 1663–1724)
Date: 1704 or earlier
Culture: French, probably Paris
Medium: Marble
Dimensions: confirmed: 27 1/2 × 43 1/4 × 20 3/4 in., 686 lb. (69.9 × 109.9 × 52.7 cm, 311.2 kg)
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Purchase, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, Joseph M. Cohen Gift, and Fletcher Fund, by exchange, 2003
Accession Number: 2003.296
On view in Gallery 548
Lucretia's suicide out of shame for her rape by Sextus Tarquinius—a self-sacrifice that led to the rebellion in Rome against the Tarquins— was frequendy depicted in prints and paintings, though less often in sculpture, from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. In France during this period femmes fortes, powerful women from ancient history or myth, such as Lucretia, Cleopatra, and Dido, as well as from the Bible, such as Esther, Jael, and Judith, were popular paragons of virtue. This sculpture shares many characteristics of the morceaux de réception, works required of candidates for admission to the Académie Royale de la Peinture et de la Sculpture in Paris. About 1700 these showcases of the sculptor's talents tended to be highly dramatic, under-lifesize marble sculptures of classical subjects. Lucretia appears to be the figure that Bertrand, one of the talented generation of sculptors who participated in royal projects at Versailles, displayed at the Salon of 1704. Exceptionally, Bertrand submitted a bronze sculpture as his academy reception piece in 1701; possibly, he carved Lucretia in the manner of the morceaux de réception to demonstrate his talents in marble."
and Wikipedia (
visit link) adds:
"Lucretia ... died c. 510 BC) was a legendary Roman housewife whose fate played a vital role in the transition from a Roman Kingdom into a Roman Republic. While there were no contemporary sources, accounts from Roman historian Livy (Livius) and Greek-Roman historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus from the time of Emperor Caesar Augustus (around the start of the Common Era) agreed that there was such a woman and that her suicide after being raped by an Etruscan king's son was the immediate cause of the anti-monarchist rebellion that overthrew the monarchy.
The incident kindled the flames of dissatisfaction over the tyrannical methods of the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. As a result, the prominent families instituted a republic, drove the extensive Royal Family of Tarquin from Rome, and successfully defended the republic against attempted Etruscan and tribal Latin intervention. Due to its sheer impact the rape itself became a major theme in European art and literature.
One of the first two consuls of the Roman Republic is Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, the husband of Lucretia. All the numerous sources on the establishment of the republic reiterate the basic events of Lucretia's story, though accounts vary slightly.
Lucretia's story, anyhow, is therefore not deemed a myth by most historians, but rather a historical legend about an early history that was already a major part of Roman folklore before it was first written about. The evidence points to the historical existence of a woman named Lucretia and a historical incident that played a critical part in the real downfall of a real monarchy. Many of the specific details, though, are debatable, and vary depending on the writer. Post-Roman uses of the legend typically became mythical in portrayal, being of artistic rather than historical merit....
Revolution
Titian's Tarquin and Lucretia (1571).
Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder.
Main article: Overthrow of the Roman monarchy
The newly sworn revolutionary committee paraded the bloody corpse to the Roman Forum and arriving there heard grievances against the Tarquins and began to enlist an army. Brutus "urged them to act as men and Romans and take up arms against their insolent foes." The gates of Rome were blockaded by the new revolutionary soldiers and more were sent to guard Collatia. By now a crowd had gathered in the forum; the presence of the magistrates among the revolutionaries kept them in good order.
Brutus happened to be Tribune of the Celeres, a minor office of some religious duties, but one which as a magistracy gave him the theoretical power to summon the curiae, an organization of patrician families used mainly to ratify the decrees of the king. Summoning them on the spot he transformed the crowd into an authoritative legislative assembly and began to harangue them in one of the more noted and effective speeches of ancient Rome.
He began by revealing that his pose as fool was a sham designed to protect him against an evil king. He leveled a number of charges against the king and his family: the outrage against Lucretia, whom everyone could see on the dais, the king's tyranny, the forced labor of the plebeians in the ditches and sewers of Rome. He pointed out that Superbus had come to rule by the murder of Servius Tullius, his wife's father, next-to-the-last king of Rome. He "solemnly invoked the gods as the avengers of murdered parents." The king's wife, Tullia, was in fact in Rome and probably was a witness to the proceedings from her palace near the forum. Seeing herself the target of so much animosity she fled from the palace in fear of her life and proceeded to the camp at Ardea.
Brutus opened a debate on the form of government Rome ought to have; there were many speakers (all patricians). In summation he proposed the banishment of the Tarquins from all the territories of Rome and appointment of an interrex to nominate new magistrates and conduct an election of ratification. They had decided on a republican form of government with two consuls in place of a king executing the will of a patrician senate. This was a temporary measure until they could consider the details more carefully. Brutus renounced all right to the throne. In subsequent years the powers of the king were divided among various elected magistracies.
A final vote of the curiae carried the interim constitution. Spurius Lucretius was swiftly elected interrex; he was prefect of the city anyway. He proposed Brutus and Collatinus as the first two consuls and that choice was ratified by the curiae. Needing to acquire the assent of the population as a whole they paraded Lucretia through the streets summoning the plebeians to legal assembly in the forum. Once there they heard a constitutional speech by Brutus not unlike many speeches and documents of western civilization subsequently. It began:
Inasmuch as Tarquinius neither obtained the sovereignty in accordance with our ancestral customs and laws, nor, since he obtained it — in whatever manner he got it — has he been exercising it in an honourable or kingly manner, but has surpassed in insolence and lawlessness all the tyrants the world ever saw, we patricians met together and resolved to deprive him of his power, a thing we ought to have done long ago, but are doing now when a favourable opportunity has offered. And we have called you together, plebeians, in order to declare our own decision and then ask for your assistance in achieving liberty for our country ....
A general election was held. The vote was for the republic. The monarchy was at an end, even while Lucretia was still displayed in the forum.
The constitutional consequences of this event were, formally at least, to reverberate for more than two thousand years. Rome would never again have a hereditary "king", even if later emperors were absolute rulers in all but name. This constitutional tradition prevented both Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus from accepting a crown; instead they had to devise a confluence of several republican offices onto their persons in order to secure absolute power. Their successors both in Rome and in Constantinople adhered to this tradition in form if not in essence, and even the office of German Holy Roman Emperor remained typically elective rather than hereditary - up to its abolition in the Napoleonic Wars, 2314 years later."