The suicide of Cato

Pietro Testa
Italy
1612 – 1650

The suicide of Cato
1648
etching, drypoint on paper
Place made
Rome
Medium
etching, drypoint on paper
State
B.XX.220.20: Bellini (1976) 39 ii/iv; Cropper (1988) 116; TIB 45
Dimensions
28.2 x 41.4 cm (plate)
28.3 x 41.5 cm (sheet)
Credit line
Bequest of David Murray 1908
Accession number
084G2177
Signature and date
Signed and dated in plate l.r., "P. Testa 1648".
Catalogue raisonne
B.XX.220.20: Bellini (1976) 39 ii/iv; Cropper (1988) 116; TIB 4506.020.S2
Media category
Print
Collection area
European prints

  • WALL LABEL: A Beautiful Line: Italian prints from Mantegna to Piranesi, 2012

     

    The Lucchese artist Pietro Testa had little success as a painter, so turned to printmaking. His prints reveal his learned and original approach to art.  This print belongs to the final years of Testa’s career in Rome and depicts the suicide of the Roman Stoic philosopher Cato the Younger. Cato is shown eviscerating himself, choosing to commit suicide rather than losing his liberty. By his death Cato upheld the virtue of the middle path in political life, defined by Aristotle in his Politics as a government in which power is exercised neither by rich nor poor, but by men of middle rank. Testa made the print just two years before his death, probably by suicide.

     

    Maria Zagala, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs

  • A beautiful line. Italian prints from Mantegna to Piranesi

    Art Gallery of South Australia, 20 August 2010 – 31 October 2010
  • [Book] Cropper, Elizabeth. 1988. Pietro Testa 1612-1650, Prints and Drawings.
  • [Book] Bellini, Paolo. 1976. L'Opera incisca di Pietro Testa.
  • [Book] 1990. The Illustrated Bartsch 45 (Commentary). Italian Masters of the Seventeenth Century.
  • [Book] Zagala, Maria. 2010. A Beautiful Line : Italian prints from Mantegna to Piranesi.