Ancient painting on a historical subject, oil on canvas from the 17th-18th century.

Oil on canvas. The woman depicted in the scene can be linked to Porzia, the noble Roman and wife of Brutus, who lived in the 1st century BC: according to legend, she committed suicide by swallowing a burning coal, and it is at this fatal moment that she is represented here. The painting is very close to the pictorial methods of the painting of the same name from the Cignani school, attributed to his pupil Marcantonio Franceschini and preserved at the Palazzo Tozzoni in Imola. The figure of Porzia, placed in an interior with classical elements, occupies the entire field of the scene and is depicted sitting in front of the burning brazier, bringing the coal to her mouth; her expression reveals the suffering of the act she is performing, but also her determination; her gaze, turned towards the distance, already places her far from the life she is about to leave. The painting has been restored and re-canvas. It is presented in an old 18th-century frame.