Clélie et ses compagnes devant Porsenna qui leur rend la liberté

Melchior Feselen's Clélie et ses compagnes devant Porsenna depicts the Roman heroine Cloelia, who escaped Etruscan captivity by swimming the Tiber with her fellow hostages and was then released by the Etruscan king Porsenna out of admiration for her courage. Dated 1529 and held in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, the subject is drawn from Livy's account of early Roman history and offered northern Renaissance painters an opportunity to treat a classical narrative of female heroism. The Danube School's dramatic landscape tradition was well-suited to a scene involving a river crossing and a confrontation between brave captives and an impressed monarch.

Feselen organizes the composition around the confrontation between Cloelia's group and the seated Porsenna, with landscape and the Tiber visible in the setting. His characteristic Danube School palette — warm, dramatic, with active landscape elements — frames the narrative.