The Suicide of Portia, Oil on Canvas

Oil on canvas. The woman represented in the scene can be traced back to Portia, the Roman noblewoman wife of Brutus, who lived in the 1st century BC: according to legend she committed suicide by swallowing a burning coal, and it is in this fatal moment that she is depicted here. The painting is very close to the pictorial methods of the painting of the same name from the Cignani school, attributed to his pupil Marcantonio Franceschini and preserved at Palazzo Tozzoni in Imola. The figure of Portia, placed in an interior with classical elements, occupies the entire field of the scene, and is represented sitting in front of the burning brazier, in the act of putting coal in her mouth; her expression reveals the suffering of the gesture she is making, but also her determination, her gaze looking into the distance already places her far from the life she is leaving. The painting has been restored and relined. It is presented in an antique 18th century frame .