‘A Piece of Skilful Painting’ in Shakespeare’s Lucrece

Summary

In 1593, Shakespeare promised Southampton ‘some graver labour’ to follow Venus and Adonis. Indeed, Muriel Bradbrook has persuasively argued that Venus itself was an attempt by Shakespeare to silence the slanders uttered by Greene in 1592 and establish himself as a respectable poet. In the elaborate description of a tapestry or painting of Troy which takes up over two hundred lines in Lucrece, Shakespeare draws on Virgil and Classical art theorists to create for his poem a proper epic ecphrasis, comparable to the shield of Achilles, to the bronze doors at Carthage where Aeneas sees written the fate of his people, or to the ‘clothes of Arras and of Toure’ which decorate Malacasta’s castle in the Faerie Queene. When he describes the painter’s wondrous skill, Shakespeare invokes the ancient paragone of poet and painter, asserting his own mastery of his craft and equality to the ancient masters of the arts. When he describes the response of Lucrece to the ‘well-painted piece’, Shakespeare defines her stature as a woman and as the hero of his poem.