The Death of Cleopatra

This drawing is connected to a fresco executed by Cambiaso on the ceiling of the reception room on the second floor of the Palazzo Vincenzo Imperiale in Genoa. The fresco was destroyed during World War II, but it is known from old photographs (Magnani, op. cit., p. 97, fig. 99). Cambiaso’s large modello for the decoration survives at the Ackland Art Museum at Chapel Hill (inv. 79.66.1; see Gillham and Wood, op. cit., no. 3). Several drawn versions of the composition are known. A sheet from the Lempereur collection was sold at Christie’s, London, 7 July 2010, lot 303, and another version is in the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh (inv. D718; see K. Andrews, Catalogue of Italian Drawings, London, 1968, I, p. 25, fig. 195). A third drawing, representing only one figure group of the scene, is at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (inv. NM 1588⁄1863; see P. Bjurström, Italian Drawings. Venice, Brescia, Parma, Milan, Genoa, Stockholm, 1979, no. 304, ill.). As argued by Jonathan Bober (op. cit., p. 270, under no. 30), the present sheet is an earlier version of the final composition developed in the fresco. While the general organization of the scene and the main motifs are fully developed, the foreground is still largely empty.