Cleopatra

Ernest Bradfield Freed

Ernest Bradfield Freed’s luminescent print, “Cleopatra,” is an exceptional example of the intaglio technique and its place in Abstract Expressionism. Using etching, engraving, and sugar lift aquatint, Freed “paints” the plate with texture, framing the image of history’s most famous monarch in Cubistic, crisscrossed paths of light and shadow. The composition is extremely large for an intaglio print -- measuring nearly 3 by 4 feet -- yet reads as nuanced as any oil painting, illuminating Freed’s deft use of the requisite cumbersome tools to produce the vibrant energy he employs on the plate.

This may be an image of Cleopatra’s final moments in the darkened tomb where, by some accounts, her suicide took place. Freed displays assured placement of the recumbent figure whose face tilts upward, as if in supplication, perhaps to ask the gods for mercy on her son and heir to the Ptolemaic throne, Cesarion.

For these large intaglios Freed had to build a special, oversized printing press, have the paper specially made for him and engage his son to help print the large sheets.