Study for "Antiochus and Stratonice" (c. 1746): Art, History and Details

Study for "Antiochus and Stratonice" (c. 1746) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Pompeo Batoni (Italian, 1708–1787).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Struck by a mysterious illness, Antiochus lies in bed near death. His grieving father, who has recently taken Stratonice as his wife, summons a doctor. Noticing that the sight of the young woman quickens Antiochus’s pulse and that passion causes his sickness, the doctor describes the youth’s predicament to his father, who selflessly offers Stratonice to his son. The subject, both a love story and an example of parental devotion, enjoyed considerable popularity well into the 1800s.

Object facts

• Title: Study for "Antiochus and Stratonice"
• Date: c. 1746
• Creator attribution: Pompeo Batoni (Italian, 1708–1787)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 33.3 x 39.5 x 5.4 cm (13 1/8 x 15 9/16 x 2 1/8 in.); Unframed: 24.2 x 30.5 cm (9 1/2 x 12 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 18th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2008.69

Collection credit

Bequest of Jacques de Caso in memory of Alice Cagliostro and Domenick Cagliostro

Further reading listed by the museum

• Bowron, Edgar Peters. Pompeo Batoni: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 2016.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.