2-548-496 - © Fine Art Images/Heritage Images

'Tarquinius and Lucretia', 16th or early 17th century. Sextus Tarquinius raping Lucretia, a married noblewoman. According to both Ovid and Livy, this act, and Lucretia's subsequent suicide, led to a popular uprising that overthrew the rule of Sextus Tarquinius' father, Lucius Tarquinius Suberbus, the seventh and last king of Rome, and resulted in the establishment of the Roman Republic. The story is also told in Shakespeare's narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, published in 1594. Found in the collection of the State Hermitage, St Petersburg.