Template:POTD/2023-02-14
The Banquet of Cleopatra is an oil-on-canvas painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, completed in 1744 and now in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. This is the first of three large paintings of the subject by Tiepolo. In addition to these, the much smaller oil studies or modelli for each of the larger paintings survive. The subject of the painting is a supposed historical episode described by both Pliny's Natural History and Plutarch's Lives, in which Cleopatra takes an expensive pearl and dissolves it in her wine prior to imbibing the drink.Painting credit: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo