agrippinatheyounger:Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium by Johann Georg Platzer (c. 1730-17

agrippinatheyounger:

Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium by Johann Georg Platzer (c. 1730-1761) - English Heritage (Wellington Museum, Apsley House)

The Battle of Actium, 30 BC, marked the defeat of Mark Antony at the hands of Augustus and led to the suicide of Cleopatra. Mark Antony is shown in the central galley commanding his men, while Cleopatra is enthroned on a splendid ship on the right. Platzer used a very similar composition – a mêlée of ships of the ancient world as he saw it – for his depiction of The Rape of Helen. Born in St Paulin Eppan, in the Tyrol, Platzer was a pupil of his stepfather Josef Anton Kessler at Innsbruck and of his uncle Johann Christoph Platzer in Passau. From 1728, when he entered the Vienna Academy, he worked mainly in Vienna. He painted genre, historical and mythological subjects, with a high degree of finish, influenced by the Antwerp school of the seventeenth century, in particular the Francken family and Jan Brueghel.