Signed lower left: Angelica Kauffmann pinx. ‘This version of Cleopatra’s image, which deviates from the usual depiction of a femme fatale, begins with Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Il Guercino. His painting in the Capitoline Museum in Rome influenced both Anton Raphael Meng's well-known depiction of Cleopatra before Augustus in Stourhead House and two paintings by Angelika Kauffmann. The artist was well acquainted with both previous works. Her composition is thus in the tradition of a Cleopatra painting repeatedly thematised in classicism, which does not depict the ‘femme forte’ triumphing over men, but rather the seemingly humble woman kneeling before a man and whose apparent weakness is not entirely convincing. In 1783, the artist treated the subject for the first time in a tondo painted on copper for Goerge Bowles (today in the Spencer Museum of Art, USA, inv. no. 1956.0033). It was not until 1806, a year before her death, that she painted the scene again in a large-format canvas commissioned by Senator Giovanni Battista Sommariva (1760-1826). The oil sketch shown here was created in preparation for this late work, which is now lost. Strictly speaking, it is a compositional study in which not only the overall layout of the painting but also the colour scheme is defined. ‘The oil sketch is important not least because it is the only evidence of the lost late work by Angelika Kauffmann. Accordingly, the compositional study must have been created before the large oil painting began and can therefore be dated before/around 1806.’ (Quoted from the expert report by Dr Bettina Baumgärtel, head of the Angelika Kauffman Research Project, dated 5 May 2024).