Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. The Meeting of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, 1747

This 1747 painting is the companion piece to "The Banquet of Cleopatra". Together, these two canvases by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo are regarded as the works that made the collection of Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov famous. The scene shows the meeting of the Roman general Mark Antony with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.

Tiepolo created both compositions in the 1740s, shortly before his frescoes in the Palazzo Labia in Venice, where he returned to the story of Antony and Cleopatra. Yusupov acquired the paintings in 1800 in St Petersburg. At first they hung in the Tiepolo Hall of the prince's palace on the Fontanka in St Petersburg, and later in a special hall at Arkhangelskoye.

Antony and Cleopatra are shown in the right half of the canvas; with his right hand Antony points to Artavasdes standing beside them. In the right foreground a dwarf embraces a dog, and in the background by the ruins are a white horse and two dark-skinned boys. On the left, soldiers carry trophies on litters along the shore, banners lie on the ground, and a ship with an awning is seen in the distance. Oil on canvas.