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The story of Semiramis is recounted by the Roman historian and moralist Valerius Maximus in his De Factis Dictisque Memorabilibus Libri (vol. IX, p.3, ext.4), a collection of short stories illustrating examples of good and bad conduct from the lives of important figures. Semiramis, a woman of unrivalled beauty, was the daughter of the fish-goddess Derceto, and became one of the founders of the Assyrian empire of Nineveh. Interrupted at her toilette by news of a revolt, Semiramis, the legendary queen of Assyria, demonstrated her determination as a ruler by refusing to finish combing her hair until she had led her army to crush the rebels. This depiction of the story is made lively and dramatic by the emphatic gestures and by such bold compositional devices as the off-center placement of Semiramis and the radically cropped figure of her maid at right.
The subject clearly appealed to Guercino, for he painted no fewer than three treatments of the theme, all of half-length format. The first is a this painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which he executed in 1624 for Daniele Ricci. In around 1627-28 he returned to the subject, with a painting formerly in the Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, destroyed in 1945. The third and final treatment was commissioned in 1645 by Cardinal Cornaro, and is now in a private collection.
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