The Banquet of Cleopatra

The Banquet of Cleopatra
Artist	Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Year	1744
Type	Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions	250.3 by 357 centimetres (98.5 in × 140.6 in)
Location	National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

The Banquet of Cleopatra is a painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo completed in 1744. It is now in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.

The work depicts the culmination of a wager between Cleopatra and Mark Antony as to which one could provide the most expensive feast. As recounted in Pliny the Elder's Natural History she wins the wager: after Mark Antony's feast, Cleopatra drops a rare and precious pearl from her earring into a cup of vinegar and drinks it once the pearl has dissolved. The third person at the table is Lucius Munatius Plancus, at the time Antony's ally, who was to decide the winner of the wager.

This is the first of three large paintings of the subject done by Tiepolo. In addition the much smaller oil studies or modelli for each survive.

The subject had been painted by various artists, especially in Italian palace decoration and in Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting, with a version by Jacob Jordaens (1653, Hermitage Museum); one by Gérard de Lairesse (late 1670s, Rijksmuseum); two versions by Jan de Bray, using his own family, including himself, as models (Royal Collection, 1652, and Currier Museum of Art, New Hampshire, 1669). In between the two versions most of those depicted had died in an outbreak of plague, making the later version largely a memorial portrait. Other artists included Gerard Hoet, who painted three versions of the subject in the early 18th century (two are in the Getty Center and Bayreuth, Germany).

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