Gregorio Lazzarini

We are grateful to Prof. Lino Moretti who, on the basis of photographs, has identified the present painting to be by Gregorio Lazzarini and has identified the present subject.

The story is taken from Plutarch's Lives, vol. X.  It is told that one day, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus found two snakes in his bedchamber.   Tiberius consulted the soothsayers and was told that he could not kill the snakes nor release them, adding that if the male snake was killed, Tiberius should die, and if the female, his wife Cornelia would die. In an act of loyalty and love for his wife, Tiberius decided to kill the male snake as he was an old man and felt that he had lived a full life and his wife Cornelia was still a young woman.  Tiberius died shortly thereafter leaving Cornelia to raise their twelve children.  After his death, Cornelia remained devoted to Tiberius and never remarried. 

The present painting is alomst certainly identifiable with a work of the same subject mentioned by Vincenzo da Canal in his Vita di Gregorio Lazzarini, Venice 1809, p. xxxix, "...Gaio Gracco [sic] con la moglie al letto, che uccide il serpente sottoponendosi per l'augurio alla morte, come avealo predetto l'Indovino, che vi è presente, per Vienna [Caius Gracchus with his wife in bed, who kills the serpent sentencing himself according to the prophecy to death, as the soothsayer who is present had predicted,........(painted) for Vienna]".