13 Classic Works, Art and the Egyptian Woman, with Footnotes
Aug 4, 2022
Cleopatra
Oil on canvas
135 × 246 cm (53.1 × 96.9 in)
Private collection
Wilhelm Kotarbiński (born 30 November 1848, Nieborów; died 4 September 1921, Kiev) was a Polish Symbolist painter of historical and fantastical subjects who spent most of his working life in Ukraine. He began his studies at the Warsaw School of Art from 1867 to 1871. Afterward, he enrolled at the University of Warsaw, urged on by his parents who were opposed to an artistic career, but stayed for only a short time before borrowing money from his uncle and moving to Italy. The following year, he was able to arrange a stipend from the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and enrolled at the Accademia di San Luca, where he studied with Francesco Podesti until 1875, living in poverty and barely surviving a case of typhoid…