“The Death of Julius Caesar” (after Luigi Camuccini), 19th Century
Oil on canvas
This painted copy faithfully reproduces The Death of Julius Caesar (La Morte di Giulio Cesare), the celebrated neoclassical masterpiece by Luigi Camuccini (1771–1844), one of Italy’s foremost painters of the early 19th century. The original is housed in the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples.
The scene captures the moment of Caesar’s brutal assassination in the Roman Senate, rendered with theatrical composition and psychological tension. The narrative, drawn from classical sources, describes the initial horror of the bystanders, the ferocity of the conspirators, and Brutus’s fatal blow — the final betrayal that caused Caesar to abandon resistance and surrender to his fate.
Driven, whether by accident or fate, to the base of Pompey’s statue, Caesar died at its foot, as if under the symbolic judgment of Rome’s past.
He was stabbed twenty-three times — each wound a testament to the violence of history enacted upon a single man.
