What type of snake is reputed to have been used by Cleopatra when committing suicide?
Death of Cleopatra by Veneziano and a drawing by Raphael depicting Cleopatra's suicide as she slumbered were inspired by the ancient Greco-Roman "Sleeping Ariadne", which at the time was thought to depict Cleopatra. Works of the French Renaissance also depict Cleopatra slumbering while pressing a snake to her breast. Michelangelo created a black-chalk drawing of Cleopatra's suicide by asp bite around 1535. The 17th-century Baroque painter Guido Reni by asp bite, albeit with a snake that is tiny compared to a real Egyptian cobra. The "Sleeping Ariadne", acquired by Pope Julius II in 1512, inspired three poems of Renaissance literature eventually carved into
Death of Cleopatra liberation. Virgil established the view of Cleopatra as a figure of epic melodrama and romance. The story of Cleopatra's suicide by snakebite was often depicted in Medieval and Renaissance art. The artist known as the Boucicaut Master, in a 1409 AD miniature for an illuminated manuscript of "Des cas de nobles hommes et femmes" by 14th-century AD poet Giovanni Boccaccio, in a Gothic-style tomb, with a snake near Cleopatra's chest and a bloody sword driven through Antony's chest. Illustrated versions of Boccaccio's written works, including images of Cleopatra and Antony committing suicide, first appeared in France during the Quattrocento (i.e.