Lucretia

As the artist of Lucretia:

I’m surely proud of my Lucretia painting because it ended up in such a great place where many people are able to view it. What I tried to depict in my painting was three major scenes involved with the Lucretia story. The scene in the middle illustrates Lucretia dead in the middle of the Forum Romanum. Surrounding her is an army of men. The right scene pictures Lucretia dying in the arms of her father after she stabbed herself in the breast. That day she dressed in all black and went to her father to tell him that Sextus had raped her. The left scene portrays Lucretia being threated by Sextus to cheat on her husband with him so that he wouldn’t lose the bet he made with the guys.
This painting has very fine details that you may have missed when you first looked at the painting. If you look at the buildings to the left as it descends, you’ll notice that it is modern day Florence and not the regular buildings you’d see during that time period. This is what you call an anachronistic element which is something or someone that is not in its correct historical or chronological time. Something else interesting that you may have missed was the statue of David and at the bottom of his feet is Goliath. I added this element in because David and Goliath was a symbol of revolt against Tyranny. The last bit of detail is to the left of the painting where you see Sextus threatening Lucretia. That is one of Lucretia’s slaves and Sextus was going to kill both of them and put them together to make it seem like they slept together if she didn’t cheat on her husband with Sextus.
I believe the painting is being used in Ms. Arnold’s U.S. History class to show us that a picture can paint a thousand words and that there’s a meaning behind everything. There were three scenes in the Lucretia painting that told one big story. Also, maybe she’s using it to show the class to look at the details in life. When you look at the painting once, you don’t notice...