Apelles Painting the Portrait of Campaspe

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

1721

Adaline Van Horne Bequest, inv. 1945.929

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

An artist paints a portrait of a woman while a man looks on, with other figures and classical sculptures in the background. A small dog is visible in the foreground. According to an ancient Roman story, when the Greek painter Apelles fell in love with his sitter, Campaspe, Alexander the Great’s favourite concubine, the emperor gifted her to the artist. Tiepolo tells this tale through a web of gazes that includes the artist to his subject, his subject to her portrait and the little dog out to us, the viewer. Cleverly, Tiepolo depicted himself as Apelles and his wife, Cecilia, as Campaspe. Some identify the Black attendant as Alim, an enslaved African person in the Tiepolo household. The painting’s date, however, makes this unlikely. Credit: According to an ancient Roman story, when the Greek pain