The Death of Cleopatra is a highly finished scene at the border between classical composition and naturalistic style by French painter Jean-André Rixens (1846-1925). The composition painted early in his career in 1874 at age 28 is highly ordered, with a frieze-like arrangement of the figures parallel to the picture’s surface and lighting that focuses its spotlight on the nude dying Egyptian queen. Her pale body signals life leaving and contrasts with the warmth of the color of the banner behind.
Jean-André Rixens’s The Death of Cleopatra is in the Museum of the Augustines in Toulouse, France.
