Who was Cleopatra? Supplementing ancient art works with later representations, an exhibition now at the Field Museum in Chicago explores the interpenetration of Greek and Egyptian styles—and the conflicting propaganda efforts by Cleopatra and her enemies in Rome that created the dualistic persona of history's most alluring queen

Art in America, Feb, 2002 by Sheldon Nodelman

(15.) Unaccountably, a dramatic close-up of one of these anonymous ladies (catalogue no. 210) features as the cover image on the dust jacket of the American edition of the exhibition catalogue, surely misleading many readers into the assumption that this is Cleopatra herself.

(16.) See the account in the catalogue of the present exhibition, pp. 204-7 and 220-21, no. 198, of the work's probable ultimate provenance, via a private collection in Majorca, from 18th-century excavations near Ariccia, south of Rome. 17. Although the inset eyes of the Berlin Caesar are 18th-century replacements of the lost originals, available comparanda suggest that they replicate the effect of the latter quite well.

(18.) On the Roman practice of damnatio memoriae and its consequences for the images of the condemned, see the catalogue of the recent exhibition at Emory and Yale Universities, Eric Varner, ed., From Caligula to Constantine: Tyranny and Transformation in Roman Portraiture, Atlanta, Emory University, The Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2000, as well as my article on the exhibition in Art in America, March 2001, pp. 122-27.

(19.) For an examination of the ideological presuppositions and rhetorical structure of Augustus's Prima Porta portrait type see my essay "How to Read a Roman Portrait," Art in America, January/February 1975, pp. 26-33, reprinted in E. d'Ambra, ed., Roman Art in Context, Englewood Clffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1993, pp. 10-26.

(20.) This topic was not long ago the subject of a major exhibition at the Louvre and the National Gallery of Canada; see Todd Porterfield, "Egyptomania!" Art in America, November 1994, pp. 84-91, 149. Catalogue: Jean-Marcel Humbert et al., eds., Egyptomania: Egypt in Western Art 1730-1930, Paris and Ottawa, 1994.

"Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth" appeared at the Palazzo Ruspoli, Rome [Jan. 18-Feb. 25, 2001], and the British Museum, London [Apr. 16-Aug. 26, 2001]. It is currently on view at the Field Museum, Chicago [Oct. 23, 2001-Mar. 3, 2002]. The exhibition is accompanied by a 384-page catalogue published in the U.S. by Princeton University Press.

Sheldon Nodelman teaches at the University of California, San Diego, and writes on both Classical and modern art.