Exhibition Attempts to Reveal Cleopatra

A recently ended exhibition at the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome provided a new glimpse into the personality of Cleopatra who achieved the status as the most powerful woman of the world before her fateful death.

"Perhaps the fixed Roman idea of a depraved Cleopatra is not just a keyhole perspective, but expresses an unconscious longing for free sexuality somewhere between the extremes of excess and self-discipline. Despite its provincialism, the Isis statue of Pompeii's Isis Temple displays a remarkable iridescence, hues that alternate between stark eroticism and a spirituality that seems to anticipate future portraits of the Madonna," wrote one reviewer.

"The clear-cut profile of a woman, painted on the front wall of a patrician's palace salon is not, as had long been assumed, a realistic portrait of the lady of the house, but an idealized one of the glorious Egyptian woman. She came within a hair's breadth of making Caesarion, her son by Caesar, the ruler of a double kingdom," he continued.

For more on the exhibition, visit Cleopatra revealed