Revealing the African Presence: Cleopatra

"... For Renaissance artists and authors, Cleopatra VII of Egypt exemplified the dangers of excess in high places. Her life as pharaoh, with its cast of Roman emperors and generals subjected to dramatic twists of fate and emotional pathos, was perfectly suited to the revived theatrical genre of classical tragedy as in Cleopatre Captive (1552-53) by Etienne Jodelle

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.03.0102%3Asection%3DDRAMATIC+VERSIONS%3Asubsection%3DCleopatre+Captive%2C+by+Estienne+Jodelle

or Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (by 1608).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_and_Cleopatra

In the arts she was rarely the resourceful ruler but a voluptuously beautiful woman (often nude) committing suicide following that of her lover Mark Antony. In a lovely bronze statuette by Niccolo Roccatagliata ...,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Roccatagliata

Cleopatra leans into the asp's embrace, the dramatic undulations of the poisonous snake underscoring her destructive sexuality by referencing Eve's fall."

Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, pg. 10