Paying Respects to Cleopatra

Cleopatra's suicide has been depicted many times throughout history in art, literature, theater, and film. However many of the depictions were constructed by men and were highly eroticized and sexualized. The purpose of this interactive collage generator is to bring respect back to her death.

This web program generates unique collages based on the artistic choices noted below.

How to Use

Running index.html will initialize the collage generator and generate the first collage. Try it out here.

Interaction 🖱️

A mouse click will generate a new collage.

Moving the mouse across the screen will change the color of the tree from green to yellow.

Artisitic Choices

A flower is selected and placed over Cleopatra's heart.

Playing on the idea of collage, an animated Barnsley fern is generated, using a collage theorem IFS. As Cleopatra was sometimes depicted as Isis (the Egyptian moon goddess) in Egyptian art, a moon is place behind her. The original artist's name is prominently displayed. The palm tree changes from a dead yellow color to a lush green depending on the mouse position.The colors of the shapes are selected from a palette based on the original artwork.The circle and square are restricted to certain areas and sizes, but change with each generation

Credits and Inspiration

The portraits of Cleopatra are depictions by female artists, depicting events surrounding her death.

Cleopatra Decorating the Tomb of Mark Antony by Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807)

Antony and Cleopatra by Anne Seymour Damer (1788)

Cleopatra by Artemesia Gentileschi (1633-1635)

The Death of Cleopatra by Edmonia Lewis (1876)

Morte di Cleopatra by Elisabetta Sirani (mid 1600s)

Cleopatra the Alchemist by Lavinia Fontana (1605)

Cleopatra by Margaret Foley (1876)

Barnsley Fern animation inspired by @codingtrain

Images used were all public domain, or free to use through a creative commons license

Known Issues

Issue 1 Refactoring and architecture changes needed

Running this locally will create errors loading files. Must be run off of a server.

© Abra White, all rights reserved This work is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0