The stances and features I chose to include for my portrait of Antony and Cleopatra express the nature of their entanglement. The closeness and solidity with which I have depicted Antony carrying Cleopatra also reveals the sensual aspects of their relationship. Their sexuality shocked the Romans in the play, but by depicting it in this manner I am attempting to show how they were undisturbed by the scandalous interpretation of their relationship. This image, which does not necessarily depict any real moment in the play itself, is meant to show their comfort in their own, and with each other’s bodies and nudity–a choice that depicts both Antony’s growing separation from Roman conventions and Cleopatra’s intention to gain such an influence over him. Thus it is both honest and political intimacy.
Antony’s wide stance and holding of a sword was directly inspired by a passage from Cleopatra’s suicidal monologue in which she describes Antony as she envisions him in a dream: | His legs bestrid the ocean: his rear'd arm |
Likewise, the fact that he is holding her and that she looks away from him and seems to be interacting with something above her is meant to represent Antony’s vision of Cleopatra: she is his Queen, as he often refers to him, and is thus above him where he remains only as support. His role is political, militant, which is why he holds a sword (specifically, a Gladius): where he fights Earthly battles, she has access to the realm of the Gods. This, of course, is emphasized when she appears in Egypt as the goddess Isis, but also in her suicide, when she states, “I have / Immortal longings in me” (5.2.271-72). This phrase not only alludes to her desire for death and the afterlife, with all of the closeness to the gods that Egyptians and Romans alike believed the afterlife included, but to the way that in the annals of history, she has become so famous as to be alike to a goddess of the ancient times.
While I have tried to depict both of them in the eyes of the other, I have also chosen to have them looking away from each other. This I did to show that their agendas do differ throughout the play, and they are never fully in sync as a couple. Yet I also included two phrases from the play in stamps around each character: by Cleopatra, “face was as the heav’ns” (5.2.78), which she uses to describe Antony in the aforementioned scene, and by Antony, “Thou art / The armourer of my heart” (4.5.6-7), which Antony says of her. Not only do these two quotes play off their respective foci in my print (the sky and a weapon), but I also chose them for how they play off the idea of romantic love as somewhere between heaven and war (or, in essence, hell). Additionally, I noted that “armourer” is notably close in spelling to the French amour.
Antony’s and Cleopatra’s expression of gender is the final consideration I had while designing this piece. Unlike other characters we have studied, they do not cross-dress for disguise, but for experimentation in the power dynamics of their relationship and occasionally to make themselves seem more powerful or complex (Cleopatra’s manly appearance makes her seem more like a traditional, respected male leader; the allusions to Antony cross-dressing as Cleopatra makes his servant’s and follower’s relationship with him more complicated). Therefore, it felt like the clothes they wore were less important to the discussion of gender in this play than in others. Both characters embrace traditional traits of their sexes–Cleopatra in particular has a proud expression of femininity and of her female body--but also appear to have a finite affinity for them, and are uninterested in adhering to them completely. For this reason, I chose to depict them in as their biological sex, but also to make Antony’s hair long and somewhat unmasculine, while keeping Cleopatra’s short as an allusion to their gender experimentation. The uncertainty of both character’s historical appearance gives me the freedom to make these choices and to represent them as simply characters rather than historical persons.