This impeccably preserved painting by Desubleo was first published by Alberto Cottino in 1991 and most recently appears in his catalogue of the artist’s oeuvre along with its pendant, The Death of Sophonisba (fig.1). The subject is found in the Roman historian Livy’s, Ab Urbe Condita: it recounts the refusal of the Carthaginian Sophonisba to submit to Rome during the second Punic Wars.
According to Livy, The Roman general Scipio Africanus believed the defeat of Carthage lay in invading the Kingdom’s surrounding Africa, and indeed within a year of landing on the continent, Scipio twice routed the Carthaginian forces, under the command of Hasdrubal Gisco, and their Numidian allies. Overpowered by Scipio, the Numidian King Masinissa switched his alliance to Rome in return for retaining subjugated control of his territories. Masinissa’s wife, the daughter of the Carthaginian Hasdrubal Gisco, was Sophonisba, whom Scipio demanded appear as his captive in a Triumph back in Rome. The Roman triumphus celebrated a general who had successfully won a foreign war. In order to avoid the humiliation and physical jeopardies of falling prisoner to Scipio, Sophonisba took her own life, drinking a poison secreted to her by her sympathetic but powerless husband.
Cottino dates Sophonisba receiving the poison from Masinissa to the second of Desubleo’s Bolognese sojourns – between 1646 to 1652 – a period distinguished by the painter’s use of idealised figures clearly influenced by the Emilian School. The artist’s Tancredi and Erminia had been painted for Grand Duke Lorenzo de'Medici, and Biblical subjects commissioned by the Colonna and Giustiniani. Cottino described Sophonisba receiving the poison from Masinissa as ‘one of the most successful works along classical models painted by Desubleo.’ The traditional composition, excellent draughtsmanship and the emotion expressed by the characters, combines harmoniously with the model’s obvious beauty. The work was clearly inspired by a similar subject by Simon Vouet (fig. 2, now in the Kassel Museum): the analogy is evident in the arrangement of the figures, in the position of the right arm of the protagonist and, above all, in the delicate play of hands around the cup of poison.
Desubleo was born Michel Desbuleay in the Franco-Flemish city of Maubeuge, located just south of the Belgian border. He is thought to have been a student of Abraham Janssens, the master of Desubleo's elder (by eleven years) step-brother Nicholas Régnier. The precise date and circumstances of Desubleo's move to Italy are not known, but he seems to have in his early thirties followed Régnier to Rome. Desubleo’s first documented painting, Susannah and the Elders, is recorded in the collection of Vincenzo Giustiniani (a foremost collector of the Caravaggesque painters at that time). Though the painting is today lost, it was recorded in an engraving by Landon.
Desubleo moved to Bologna, entering the studio of Guido Reni in the early 1630s and Desubleo’s first work of certain date appears in 1640, The Holy Family and the Angels, found in the town of Borgo Panigale. The size of this commission suggests that the painter already enjoyed a solid reputation amongst the Bolognese gentry. Towards the end of the 1640s, the painter moved to Venice, likely subsequent to the closure of the Accademia del Disegno o del Nudo, at which Desubleo taught. Most of his painting from this period is found in churches dotting the Veneto. Desubleo left for Parma on 15 February 1666; there, sponsored by the Farnese, the master produced some of his finest works, including Ulysses and Nausicaa.
Fig. 1: Michele Desubleo, Death of Sophonisba, c. 1650, oil on canvas, 96 x 148.5 cm (37 3/4 x 58 1/2 in.), Robilant+Voena.
Fig. 2: Simon Vouet, Sophonisba receives the cup of poison from a messenger, c. 1623, 125.5 x 156.5 cm (49 3/8 x 61 5/8 in.), Kassel Museum.
