According to the donors, Prince George Lubomirsky and his wife, the Baroness Schummer-Rheinfelden, The Suicide of Lucretia was originally part of the collection of Cardinal Mazzarino and was at his residence, (now the premises of the Institut de France) when it was damaged by fire in 1660. After 1815, the collection was moved to the Molkerbastei Palace in Poland, until its partial dispersion during the World War II. The principal literary source for the Legend of Lucretia is the work of Titus Livy, Roman History, Book I, LVII-LX. According to this historian, Lucretia’s father was Suprius Lucrecius Tricipetinus, the supreme consul in 509 BC and she was married to Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, also presumably a consul at the same time. Distinguished for her beauty and virtue, Lucretia aroused un- controllable passion in Tarquinius Sextus, the son of the king of Rome Tarquinius Superbus. While a guest in her home he raped her, threatening to kill her if she resisted and leave a decapitated nude slave beside her dead body in order to implicate her in the humiliating act of adultery. Mortified by the loss of her honor, Lucretia ordered that her father and husband be summoned to return from their journeys, and after obtaining an oath of vengeance from them, plunged a dagger into her heart. Lucretia’s suicide incited a mass revolt, which led to the downfall of Tarquinius Superbus and to the establishment of the Republic. Far beyond the political repercussions of a revolt for liberation against tyranny, the theme of a “noble death” or suicide for honor, specifically favored by the neo-Stoicism in vogue from the second half of the 16th century, was also the subject matter of several moral, theological, and philosophical controversies and furthermore, comprised a dense dramaturgy with its endless cast of figurative characters from ancient history, (especially Roman) such as Cleopatra, Cato Uticensis, Portia, Sofonisba, Agrippina the elder, Archimedes, and Lucretia. The theme of Lucretia is one of the most recurrent in 17th-century art and is depicted in works ranging from Shakespeare’s poem The Rape of Lucretia written in 1594 to the harmonious “cantata” composed by Haendel in 1706, and especially in the works of Reni, whose studio created at least fifteen of the currently known versions of Lucretia’s suicide, besides the painting in the Masp collection (Genoa, private collection and in Baccheschi 1971, ad indicem). In the Masp work, Reni – perhaps as a puritan reaction to the customary eroticism attributed to the scene by Giulio Romano and Titian – pictures Lucretia after the rape, committing suicide by stabbing herself. Although the condition of the work makes it difficult to precisely evaluate this painting, it is of excellent quality and most probably came from the master’s studio. In his 1971 publication, Baccheschi did not include this work among those painted by the hand of the master himself. The Masp painting differs from the other known versions painted at Reni’s studio and furthermore shows no similarity to the Suicide of Cleopatra, a theme profusely depicted by Reni, which, in general, was of a similar composition. This work however is definitely from the period 1620-1640, during which Reni painted many variations on this theme. According to Spear (written communication), this work appears to be a “very beautiful product of Reni’s studio”.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

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