Lucretia

Lucretia's virtue inspired ravenous lust in Sextus Tarquinius, son of the king, who returned to see Lucretia without Collatinus’ knowledge a few days later. The unsuspecting noblewoman received him as an honored guest . Then in the cover of night, Sextus snuck into Lucretia’s bedchamber while she slept, drawing his sword and threatening to kill her if she made a sound. Lucretia resisted in vain. Sextus hissed "If death will not move you, dishonor shall. I will kill you first, then cut the throat of a slave and lay his naked body by your side. Will they not believe that you have been caught in adultery with a servant and paid the price?" As Livy wrote "Even the most resolute chastity could not have stood against this dreadful threat. Lucretia yielded. Sextus raped her, and rode away, proud of his success."

After Tarquin left, Lucretia was destroyed by the moral atrocity done to her. She summoned her father and husband to return home and revealed the crime to them. They tried to comfort her, but despite their protestations of her innocence, she was determined to take her own life. Following a final plea that they punish the perpetrator, "Lucretia drew a knife from under her robe, drove it into her heart, and fell forward, dead." Overwhelmed by grief, the father, husband, and two accompanying friends swore to avenge her death. They incited a mass revolt against the tyrannical rule of Tarquin after parading Lucretia’s body through the streets. The king and his family were forced into exile, and Sextus Tarquinius was subsequently assassinated.

Rembrandt omits most of these details and figures from Lucretia’s story to focus solely on Lucretia herself. The spectator is confronted with Lucretia's anguish and interior monologue in the moments before her death. She grasps a cord to steady herself--perhaps suspended from a bed hanging or a bell cord. Blood stains her white bed clothes and begins to fill her mouth, as her eyes well with tears.