Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt

[Bianca]

Sebastiano Mazzoni

Pinacoteca Dei Concordi
Rovigo, Italy

[Bianca]

Leontyne Price as Cleopatra

Metropolitan Opera House

[Bianca]

Cleopatra With The Asp

Guido Reni
1630

[Bianca]

Sculpture

by William Story

[Bianca]

                             









                                                     Michelangelo Buonarotti




Cleopatra

This is one of the few authenticated drawings by Michelangelo and was drawn for Tommaso
de' Cavalieri, a young artist that Michelangelo passionately loved. This is the only drawing of
what Michelangelo claimed many drawings presenting to Cavalieri, that we have left.

The drawing is a study for a bust of Cleopatra and possibly represents the conflicted nature of Michelangelo's love for Cavalieri since Cleopatra was widely understood in the Renaissance as
emasculating Caesar and later Marc Antony with her beauty.

[Tiffany Rossette]

Great research, Bianca!

[Bianca]

Hi, Tiffany,

Just could not resist, I had to have a come back for BH's remarks!


I know I am prejudiced, but I just love the Michelangelo sketch, above.......


My grandaughter's name is Crystal Tiffany, but I call her Tiffany. Great name!
She will be 25 next month.

Hugs,
b

[Tiffany Rossette]

Hi Bianca,

Your grandaughter and I do share a great name, Crystal Tiffany sounds very high c lass, almost aristocratic.

I especially liked this statue, which I had never seen before:

[Volitzer]

Sorry I couldn't resist.   

[Bianca]

                                             Cleopatra biography blasts old illusions


                         Author challenges film portrayals of Egyptian queen as villainous vamp.






By ALLEN BARRA,
Special to the Star Tribune
October 3, 2008 -



                                              CLEOPATRA, LAST QUEEN OF EGYPT


By: Joyce Tyldesley.

Publisher: Basic Books, 304 pages, $27.50.

Review: Archaeologist Joyce Tyldesley takes a fresh look at Cleopatra, and finds some surprising details.


Cleopatra has generated more fame -- in the form of poems, paintings, books, plays and films -- per known fact than any woman in history. As Joyce Tyldesley phrases it in her fascinating and irresistible biography, "Cleopatra, Last Queen of Egypt," "it is clearly never going to be possible to write a conventional biography of Cleopatra." So Tyldesley has gone ahead and written one.

An archaeologist, author ("Daughters of Isis"), and popular consultant for TV shows on ancient history, Tyldesley has chosen to re-create her subject by putting together the puzzle pieces of history that surround Cleopatra's life and legend. Neither an Egyptian by blood nor an actual Greek -- she could trace her ancestry on her father's side to the original Ptolemy, a general of Alexander the Great -- she was a fabulous hybrid of those cultures and several others which were native to the Egypt of the first century B.C.

What she was not, Tyldesley argues, was the villainous vamp portrayed in the movies. Played by such actresses as Theda Bara, Claudette Colbert and Elizabeth Taylor, the movie Cleopatra derived from the overheated imaginations of such western writers as Plutarch, whose "Life of Mark Antony" influenced most later writers, including Shakespeare.

Where Tyldesley's book differs from most modern accounts of Cleopatra's life and times is that her conclusions stem from an intimate knowledge of Egyptian culture rather than from Greek and Roman historians, to whom Cleopatra was a combination of sorceress and seductress. Charm and intelligence were almost certainly her most alluring traits and what first attracted Caesar to her. (Her money didn't hurt, either; according to Tyldesley, "Cleopatra was the wealthiest monarch in the world.")

Cleopatra was, she concludes, "an intelligent and effective monarch who set realistic goals and who very nearly succeeded in creating a dynasty that would have re-established Egypt as a world super power." Roman historians, though, saw only "an unnatural, immodest woman who preyed on other women's husbands. From this developed the myth of the sexually promiscuous Cleopatra ... a harsh legacy indeed for a woman who probably had no more than two, consecutive sexual relationships."

Readers who enjoy not only history but how it evolves into myth will find a feast in Tyldesley's book. You may be disappointed to find out that the Queen of Egypt did not first appear to Caesar unwrapped from an Oriental carpet, and it's unlikely that Cleopatra succumbed to the bite of an asp, but Tyldesley's theories as to what most likely did happen are at least as interesting as the folklore.




Allen Barra writes about sports and culture
for the Wall Street Journal.
His next book is

"Yogi Berra, Eternal Yankee,"
due in March 2009.