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- ISSN: 0165-8204
- E-ISSN: 2667-1573
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Boccaccio’s Cleopatra, of: waarom huidskleur belangrijk is (en was)1
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Lampas, Volume 58, Issue 2, Jun 2025, p. 126 - 139
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- 01 Jun 2025
Abstract
Abstract
In the reception of Cleopatra, there are very few images of her between Antiquity and the Late Middle Ages. This article focuses on some of those earliest images, found in manuscripts from the 14th century. It argues that while it is likely that Cleopatra was generally imagined as a white woman, the absence of a strong visual tradition meant that she could be imagined as a racialized ‘Other’. This is evidenced by a depiction of her in the Abreujamen de las estorias, an early 14th-century Occitan text which shows Cleopatra as a woman with dark skin and distinctive racialized features. In the manuscript tradition of Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris, however, she is always depicted as a white woman. With the popularity of Boccaccio’s work, it was this version of Cleopatra that became entrenched in the Western visual tradition.
© Ivo Wolsing