Since June 11, the Institute of the Arab World in Paris offers to discover Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Egypt through an exhibition entitled “Le Mystery Cleopatra”. On the other side of the Atlantic, in Washington, in the United States, the Smithsonian museum also exhibits the famous Egyptian queen.
The statue of Edmonia Lewis (in illustration of this article), produced in 1876 and exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, shows Cléopatra just after his death. She is lying on a large throne, her eyes closed: she has just been bitten by a snake. This impressive, life -size work is called Cleopatra’s death. Edmonia Lewis, an American black artist, sculpted her for the Universal Exhibition of Philadelphia. To create this statue, she was inspired by old coins and archaeological discoveries made in Egypt. She wanted to represent Cleopatra in her last moments, between pain and silence.
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The throne recalls a famous statue of the Pharaoh Khéphren, but Edmonia replaced the usual animals with human faces. We also see Egyptian symbols, such as lotus flowers, a rising sun, and even kinds of hieroglyphs – which form no words, but give a mysterious effect. Cleopatra has jewelry inspired by ancient books on Egypt, an amulet in the shape of a heart, sandals like those of the time of Ramses, and a dress that looks like those that we see in the neoclassical paintings of the painter David or Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.
In the end, sculpture is a mixture of everything you knew – or thought it – on Egypt at the time. Edmonia Lewis has gathered several ideas and objects from other works to invent his own Cleopatra, between ancient history and imagination. At the time, we often compared his statue to that of another artist, William Wetmore Story, who had sculpted Cleopatra in 1858, with African features. The two works show how this queen continues to inspire different visions.
American fascination for Cleopatra
In the nineteenthe A century, Cleopatra fascinates many American artists. We know that at least six sculptors created fourteen statues representing the Queen of Egypt. Some show it in bust, others in full size, often at the dramatic moment of her death. Among these works, a statue remains a mystery: we do not know who did it or what it looked like exactly.
Cleopatra becomes famous in Europe and the United States in the XIXe century, thanks to the military campaigns of Napoleon in Egypt at the very end of the previous century. These expeditions have brought back many discoveries, such as drawings of temples, ancient objects or the famous Description of Egypta large illustrated book. In 1822, Champollion succeeded in translating the hieroglyphs, which makes even more want to better know ancient Egypt.
In America, Cleopatra is not only pleased with its history. It also becomes an important symbol. For some women, she represents a strong queen, who dares to stand up to men. This is why women are starting to write her life in books, showing that she has power. But Cleopatra is also talked about in the debates on slavery. At that time, the black Americans, descendants of Africans reduced to slavery, said that Cleopatra comes from a large African people: the Egyptians of Antiquity. For American whites who want to keep slavery, this is a problem. They will then invent ideas to show that ancient Egypt was “white”, based on objects, religious texts or mummies. This allows them to claim that only whites have created great civilizations, to justify their superiority and slavery.
A sculpture to tell a story
Edmonia Lewis is a committed African-American artist. With her sculpture, she wants to talk about the difficulties experienced by blacks in the United States. Even if slavery was abolished in 1863 during the Civil War, inequalities continue, especially in the south, for a period called reconstruction. When Cleopatra’s death is presented to the public in 1876, opinions were shared. African-American newspapers admire the work, but some art critics are more reserved. After the exhibition, the statue is neither bought nor exposed: it is forgotten for almost a hundred years.
Rediscovering much later, it is now considered a masterpiece. Historians do not all agree on its meaning. For some, Edmonia Lewis wanted to show Cleopatra as a strong woman, free to choose her destiny. For others, his death represents an act of resistance, like that of black Americans in the face of injustice. And even if Cleopatra is sculpted with white features, she could also represent a powerful white woman overturned – like an image of the end of slavery. A strong and courageous message for the time!
Even today, Cleopatra fascinates. We see her in films, books, comics. Recently, a Netflix series showed it like a black woman, which launched a great debate: who owns Cleopatra? What is its skin color? What does its image say about our way of telling the story? Thanks to artists like Edmonia Lewis, we discover another Cleopatra: free, proud and full of mystery.