Print 'A Cognocenti contemplating ye Beauties of ye Antique (caricature)'.

A complex and extremely pointed satire on Sir William Hamilton and his wife Emma’s notorious relationship with Nelson. Ostensibly adopting the long-established comic iconography of the old man cuckolded by a young wife, it represents Hamilton as the great classicist and antiquary scrutinizing his motley and bizarre collection of objects, but blind to their real significance: he even contemplates them the wrong way through his glasses. Everywhere they disclose his cuckoldry at the expense of Nelson and Emma. The bull Apis protects and points with his horns to two of the paintings on the wall, one of Emma as Cleopatra, bare-breasted and clutching a gin bottle, the other of Nelson as Mark Antony: these refer both to the great classical and Shakespearean love story and to Nelson’s Egyptian campaign, but also raise a question about Nelson in the comparison with Mark Antony, concerning his commitment to put his public duty before his private desires.

In the next painting, above Hamilton’s head, Vesuvius erupts, a blunt sexual innuendo and also a reference to the Hamiltons’ home at Naples, site of classical antiquity. Finally, to the right is a portrait of Hamilton as the Roman emperor Claudius, deceived by his young wife Messalina: it is in a frame surmounted by stag’s or cuckold’s horns. Similarly, the objects ranged around the room allude in various ways to the same subject. The bust of Lais, a celebrated Greek courtesan, again takes the form of Emma, but minus her nose, possibly a reference to the effects of venereal disease, and the headless statue of a Bacchante to the left assumes the pose of one of Emma’s ‘Attitudes’. On the far right, below the picture of Claudius, is a full-length statue of Midas, but with ass’s ears: clearly a symbol for Hamilton himself, signifying that his ability to turn objects into gold will not stop him being a fool.

Beneath this barbed visual commentary is a larger moral point, to do with the relationship of public to private life, the value of learning, and the diversion of military leaders such as Nelson from performing their duty to the nation at time of war.