The Suicide of Lucretia

Jörg Breu the Elder painted this Suicide of Lucretia around 1528, depicting the Roman matron's heroic self-destruction after her rape by Tarquinius Superbus. As one of Augsburg's leading painters, Breu served the humanist patrician culture that prized classical exempla of virtue and heroism, and Lucretia's suicide—widely celebrated in classical sources as a supreme act of chastity defended to the death—was a standard subject in German humanist collecting. His treatment combines the Italian Renaissance tradition's approach to the female nude with the German painting tradition's intensity of emotional expression, Lucretia shown at the moment of the knife's entry with both physical beauty and moral determination. The subject's combination of erotic appeal and moral content served multiple aspects of humanist collecting culture simultaneously.

The dramatic moment of Lucretia's suicide is rendered with the emotional intensity characteristic of Breu's narrative painting. The figure's gesture and expression convey the moral gravity of the classical story.