blimey! Lucretia Publication

Guido Reni painted Lucretia many times, in different styles. Some were left “genuinely unfinished” and labelled in the inventory made at his death as abbozzi (sketches). This didn’t stop them being collected and displayed; patrons were given a choice of accepting unfinished paintings or getting a refund, and most chose to take the works in progress.1 Reni’s Lucretias were really popular. Aside from the many Lucretias painted by Reni, there are so many others; his Lucretia is probably not the most famous incarnation. There are so many Lucretias. All of them unfinished.

Always with the dagger close, but not always touching the flesh. It’s interesting that this is the scene.

Delicately pierced flesh. Women don’t really bleed. Art historian Richard Spear considers Reni’s many depictions of Lucretia erotic! This supposed eroticism “derives less from nakedness than from their vulnerability, and the violation done to them: from the pending plunge of a cold, sharp dagger into pale unblemished flesh”. He writes that there is “iniquitous excitement derived from watching women suffer in extremis”.2 When Shakespeare told the tale of Lucretia,3 the wound and the dagger itself are connected, clinging to Elizabethan folklore where cleaning the dagger makes the wound heal more quickly. In Shakespeare’s account, Lucretia was a “blameless victim”.4 Even in the first account of Lucretia’s rape, ancient authors sanitised and obscured violence against women.5 But I mean, that’s ok right, because it led to the downfall of the Roman monarchy, and the birth of the Roman republic. Livy, Ovid, Augustine, they all considered acts of rape and abduction “as a step toward an ultimately great outcome” – for example, in Greek mythology, Zeus’ rape of Leda resulted in the birth of Helen, and so to the fall of Troy.6 Women’s lives are footnotes. Often in the paintings too: see the countless reproductions of Gavin Hamilton’s ‘Death of Lucretia’ (also known as ‘Oath of Brutus’) where it’s Brutus who takes the central position, seeking revenge on behalf of his city. The narrative of Lucretia becomes shorthand for political mobilisation, a “tale of personal violation and a myth of imperial upheaval”, more about the horrors of imperialism than of violence against women. Lucretia becomes a figure, a body, a “symbol of the suffering nation”.7 The words put in her mouth attest to the moral values of the age in which it is told. In Livy’s account, Lucretia is quoted as saying: “It is only the body that has been violated, the soul is pure; death shall bear witness to that. . . . Although I acquit myself of the sin, I do not free myself from the penalty; no unchaste woman shall henceforth live and plead Lucretia’s example.” She had a knife concealed in her dress which she plunged into her heart, and fell dying on the floor (1.58).8 Karen Bamford points out that Jacobean plays were constantly rehearsing variants of the stories of Lucretia and Philomela, which tells you something about the fetishisation of chastity. While the Lucretia story “idealises the self-destructive rape victim, the Philomela story … demonises the vengeful rape victim”.9 Philomela … there are less famous artistic portrayals of Philomela, a princess of Athens who was raped by her brother-in-law Tereus. She vowed to seek revenge so he cut out her tongue, but she wove her account into a tapestry, and sent it to her sister Procne, who was so angry she killed her son (by Tereus), boiled and served him as a meal to Tereus. Philomela and Procne showed him the severed head of his son and fled, and were almost caught by Tereus but prayed to the gods and were transformed into birds – Philomela into a nightingale (the female nightingale can’t sing) and Procne into a swallow. Tereus into 6