The Suicide of Lucretia

Dürer's Suicide of Lucretia from 1518 depicts the Roman noblewoman who killed herself after being raped by Tarquin's son, an act that led to the founding of the Roman Republic. The subject was popular in Renaissance art as an exemplum of female virtue and honor Albrecht Dürer brought Italian Renaissance ideas north, combining German Gothic tradition with classical proportions to become the dominant artist in the German-speaking world Oil on canvas, increasingly preferred over panel in the sixte

Dürer renders the nude figure with his characteristic anatomical precision, the dramatic gesture of self-sacrifice captured with the linear clarity and psychological intensity that distinguish his approach to the female nude.