The lot is accompanied by the expertise by Enrico Lucchese, 14 May 2023.

“Two were the greatest pearls of all time, both possessed by Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt [...]. She, while Antonio stuffed herself with refined foods every day, with a superb and at the same time brazen disdain, like a harlot queen, denigrated every luxury and the apparatus of her banquets; and when he asked her what else could be added to that magnificence of hers, he replied that she would consume ten million sesterces in a single supper. Antonio wanted to learn how, but he didn't believe it was possible. So, having made the bet, the following day [...] he arranged for Antonio to prepare a dinner, however magnificent [...] but of ordinary administration. Antonio joked and asked for an expense account. But the woman, confirming that it was a corollary, that that supper would cost the fixed price and that she alone would eat ten million sestertii, ordered the second meal to be brought. According to her instructions, her servants placed in front of her only a vase of vinegar, the strong acidity of which causes her pearls to melt until dissolution. She wore those jewels more than ever extraordinary to her ears: a truly unique masterpiece in nature. So while Antonio was waiting to see what he would do, he took off one of the two pearls and dipped it in vinegar and, once it was liquefied, he swallowed it. He threw his hand on the other pearl Lucio Planco, judge of the bet, while the woman prepared to destroy it in the same way; and she sentenced that Antonio was defeated: an omen that he has come true ”.
Pliny the Elder's story (Naturalis Historia, XI, 58) was an inspiration for many artists of the Baroque age (cf. A. Pigler, Barockthemen, II, Budapest 1974, pp. 396-398). In the eighteenth-century Venetian context, the one to which the work in question pertains, the fortune of the theme was carried forward by the illustrious examples of Antonio Pellegrini, in the fresco of Villa Giovanelli in Noventa Padovana (cf. F. Magani, in "Nuovi Studi", 8, 2003, pp. 167-180), and above all by Giambattista Tiepolo in the fresco cycle of Palazzo Labia in Venice and in the paintings on canvas now in the Melbourne and Arkangelskoje museums (see A. Mariuz, The stories of Antonio and Cleopatra , Venice 2004). In all these examples, even in the present, the homage to Paolo Veronese's Dinners is evident in the choice of light colors and above all in the layout of the composition.
In the specific case, however, the reference to the sixteenth-century model appears to be influenced by the painting of Sebastiano Ricci in the full-body drafting, modulated on drawing tones which, in Venice, were connected to the mastery of painters of a more classicist taste. It therefore appears evident that this Banquet of Cleopatra is evidently the autograph of someone who as a young man attended "the school of Cav. Bambini, where he learned the good rules of drawing, which, although later he partially abandoned those ways, served him as good guides to the art, and to be considered a skilled painter. He also tried to follow the way of Sebastiano Rizzi; and finally he formulated a style which shared the characteristics of both of those masters; but at the same time it had something original” (A.M. Zanetti, Della pittura Veneziana, Venice 1771, p. 431).
The attribution to the Venetian Girolamo Brusaferro can be demonstrated through a comparison with two works that I discussed in 2021: the Last Communion of Saint Jerome (fig. 1, in Il Secolo di Nicola Grassi, p. 84), and Berenice's Hair (fig. 2, in the Costantino and Mafalda Pisani Museum in Trieste. The Pinacoteca of the Eastern Greek Community, pp. 68-69 cat. 7). As can be seen, stylistic features, layout and color choices of the Banquet of Cleopatra are repeated in this pair of canvases: if the first seems, net of its conservation problems, comparable to the Death of Sant'Avertano (1736) of the Carmini church in Venice (fig. 3: see A. Pietropolli, Girolamo Brusaferro, Padua 2002, p. 81 cat. 112), the second, with his companion Antioco and Stratonice, denotes a rather congealed pictorial material and some compositional inconsistencies that lead to a chronology in the last phase of Brusaferro, by now a latecomer compared to the other main contemporary masters of the Serenissima, which can be confirmed with the 1741 altarpiece for Stabello (fig. 4), near Bergamo (cf. Pietropolli 2002, p. 83 cat. 117). In the second five-year period of the thirties, it then seems appropriate to place the painting in question, followed by the Carmini canvas, presumably not far from the altarpiece with the Madonna and Child and Saints Foca, Martino and Pietro for the Venetian church of Santo Stefano, dated 1737 (fig. 5: Pietropolli 2002, p. 83 cat. 113), placing itself, in the history of the fortune of the theme of the conquering queen of the Roman conqueror, after the Pellegrini's Banquet at the beginning of the century and shortly before the series of inventions prepared by the Tiepolo genius in the following decade. Unlike his colleagues who placed the judge of the bet at the table among the diners, Brusaferro chooses to place him in the background, to comply with principles of greater likelihood characteristic of his curriculum as a "dotto pittore".