Raphael

The Death of Lucretia ca. 1510–12. Raphael. Pen and brown ink over black chalk, partially stylus incised. Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1997.

This monumental drawing, produced by Raphael in his early Roman period, reveals his arresting knowledge of antique Roman sculpture and literary sources. According to Ovid's Fasti and Livy's History of Rome, the noble matron Lucretia committed suicide after being raped by Sextus, son of the tyrant Tarquin the Proud. Her husband, and later Junius Brutus, avenged her honor by leading a revolt that helped institute the republic as a form of government. The artist recast the heroic early Roman legend to focus on the rhetorical gesture of Lucretia as a model of sublime virtue, heightening the drama of her death. Raphael chose to depict the moment when she is about to plunge a dagger into her chest. The sculptural grandeur and monumentality of form evident here speak freshly of Raphael's encounter with Roman antiquity. The proportions of the imposing idealized female figure appear to be those of the canon of antique sculpture, though she is not based directly on any single Roman statue. The style and pen-and-ink technique of this major working drawing by Raphael (the outlines of the design are indented with the stylus for transferring the design) are most closely connected to the famous large-scale preliminary studies for the figures in the Parnassus and the School of Athens, painted in fresco in the Stanza della Segnatura (Vatican Palace).