Description
The suicide of the Roman heroine Lucretia was related by the historian Livy (59 BC-AD 17). Raped by an Etruscan prince, she extracted an oath of vengeance from her father and husband and then stabbed herself. As a result, the Etruscan kings were expelled and the Roman Republic was established (late 6th century BCE). At the time, her response to being raped- suicide- was considered appropriate, even noble.
By the 1500s, Lucretia was depicted as a beautiful woman whose rich garments are pulled open and who plunges a dagger into her breast. This dagger is inscribed with the mark of the Nuremberg artist, Heinrich Ulrich, who is known primarily as an engraver. The colors, mannerist figure type, and erotic overtones suggest the influence of German painters such as Hans von Aachen at the Habsburg court in Prague around 1600 but Ulrich, if he is the painter, could have encountered their paintings elsewhere. Initials previously described as reading CSB (?) intertwined with the reference to Livy on the bottom of the column (and visible in old photographs) now appear to have existed only in a later glaze. With that glaze removed, there is no longer evidence for them; thus the puzzle of the unidentified "Master CSB" can be put to rest.
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