This painting, in which Cleopatra is caught in the extreme moment of being bitten by an asp, in order not to suffer the shame of defeat and imprisonment, was painted by the master in the last phase of his activity, when, after moving to Bologna after the death of Guido Reni (1642), he inherited the role of head of the school and was influenced by it, orienting himself towards a classicist style painting, aimed at a greater idealization of the figures which is accompanied by a progressive reduction of the chromatic range and the frequent use of pastel colors. The canvas fits in well with this renewed stylistic direction, skilfully playing on the tones of only two colors: white for the sheets and for Cleopatra's complexion and purple for the cushions, the curtains of the alcove, arranged in a curtain, as in a theatrical performance, and the ruby-colored drops of blood that gush from the queen's breast, who, now bloodless, is languidly lying on the blankets. The painting is identifiable with the one mentioned in Guercino's Book of Accounts as Cleopatra's picture paid for 125 ducats "on 24 March 1648 by the most illustrious Mons. Carlo Emanuele Durazzi", cousin of a Stefano Durazzo. As was the tradition for many Genoese cardinals, he held the office of cardinal legate in the Emilian territories, subject to the Papal State. This institutional continuity - if the legate was not Genoese, the vice-delegate probably was - explains the great fortune of seventeenth-century Emilian painting in the collections of the Ligurian city. In the mid-eighteenth century by the Durazzo family, through various inheritance passages, the painting finally passed into the collection of Gio. Francesco II Brignole - Sale, who placed it in the picture gallery on the second noble floor of Palazzo Rosso.
