The theme is based on a passage from Herodotus (I, pp. 205-214). In the mid-6th century bC, Tomyris was the queen of the Scythians, a seminomadic people of Iranian’s origin that threatened the northeast frontier of the Persian empire between the Caspian Sea and the Urals, with a reputation for ferocity mentioned by the Greek’s historian. The army of Tomyris was partially annihilated by Cirus II, the Great, but she subsequently defeated him in a catastrophic battle. According to the same narrative, in revenge for the death of her son, taken prisoner by Cirus, Tomyris kept her promise to drown the head of the Persian conqueror in human blood (529 BC). The Masp’s painting represents the oriental queen bare-breasted befitting the erotic appeal the licentia of the oriental empires of Antiquity held for the 18th-century imagination. Tomyris is represented at the moment she receives the Persian king’s helmet from a slave, a delicate metonymy appropriate to a taste no longer fascinated by horror, the legacy of the century dominated by Ribera and Langetti. In addition to its eroticism and power to evoke the fascination of the Orient, the historical fable paradoxically arouses moral connotations such as feminine heroism and the victory over despotism.
Roberto Longhi (letter to P. M. Bardi of June 20, 1947) attributed the work to Pellegrini: “the theme depicted of a benevolent heroine, probably Queen Tomyris, is the most enchanting I have found in the 18th-century Venetian works of Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini. I recently commented on the importance of Pellegrini (...) as a precursor of the best of dix-huitième French, in my ‘Viatico per 5 secoli di pittura veneziana’. I regret that I was not acquainted with this painting in time because it would have been a pleasure to have published it as the most convincing example of this origin. This extremely sensual figure, whose milk-rose skin is created with thickly layered paint, was in fact executed before Boucher and Fragonard had appeared on the artistic scene. A comparison with canvases painted for transoms in the Schönborn Gallery in Pommersfelden, Bavaria, dated between 1720 and 1725, suggests this painting may be placed in the same period”.
Pallucchini (1960) and Bettagno (letter to P. M. Bardi, of October 12, 1954) dated this work within the same period. According to Pallucchini, the work “of great impact, was executed almost impetuously, with free and bold brush strokes”, (...) and “might belong to the second English period of the painter” (1719-1720). It was at this time that the artist was commissioned for work at the manor of Lord William Cadogan (1675-1726), who after being rehabilitated by King George i, had been appointed the First Earl of Cadogan, Viscount Caversham, and Baron Cadogan of Oakley. It seems that the result was the Masp Queen Tomyris, which was part of this famous Cadogan’s Collection.
— Unknown authorship, 1998