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Lot Essay
The subject is taken from Plutarch's Life of Pompey. Julia, wife of Pompey and daughter of Julius Caesar, faints when a servant comes to her with her husband's clothes stained with blood in the mistaken belief that he has been murdered during the election campaign for the Curulian Aediles. The servant had in fact been charged by Pompey to bring him new clothes after those that he was wearing were stained by the blood of a man who was wounded while close to him during a riot. The misconception led to tragedy as the shock caused Julia's miscarriage and subsequent death which marked a turning point in Roman politics as the old rivalry between Caesar and Pompey resumed.
This picture is after the original Kauffmann painted in the summer of 1785 for Karoline, Queen of Naples, which was a pendant to the second version of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, both of which are now in the Kunstsammlungen, Schlossmuseum, Weimar. A preparatory drawing for the original composition is in the Graphische Sammlung, Albertina, Vienna (B. Baumgärtel, in the catalogue of the exhibition Angelika Kauffmann, Kunstmuseum, Dusseldorf, 1999, no. 228).
This picture is after the original Kauffmann painted in the summer of 1785 for Karoline, Queen of Naples, which was a pendant to the second version of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, both of which are now in the Kunstsammlungen, Schlossmuseum, Weimar. A preparatory drawing for the original composition is in the Graphische Sammlung, Albertina, Vienna (B. Baumgärtel, in the catalogue of the exhibition Angelika Kauffmann, Kunstmuseum, Dusseldorf, 1999, no. 228).