Explore the Reception of this artwork.
Egyptian Queen is one of Frazetta's most famous, reproduced and influential works. It has been popular as a poster and other painters have created tributes to it. In his book about the history of horror comics, Richard J. Arndt says the painting deserves its high status and attributes its appeal to a "dynamic use of lighting and shadow (along with some nicely done near-nudity)".J. David Spurlock writes in his book Fantastic Paintings of Frazetta (2020) that the revision of the woman's face changes the purpose of Egyptian Queen. The face on the magazine cover looks frightened and tells a story of how the wild cat is about to attack the queen, making the picture suitable for the cover of a horror magazine. According to Spurlock, Frazetta then repainted the face to look as beautiful as possible, which reveals an ambition to turn the painting into fine art. In a 2015 doctoral dissertation, Nicole McCleese writes that the woman staring toward the viewer does not look helpless or threatened. McCleese counts Egyptian Queen to the minority of Frazetta's depictions of women where this is the case, grouping it with Tiger Woman (a.k.a. Sun Goddess, 1970) and Sun Goddess (a.k.a. Savage Pellucidar, 1972), which also appear to show women in control of big cats. In 2020, Andrew Firestone of Screen Rant called Egyptian Queen a "tremendous example" of Frazetta's ethic. He wrote that the composition directs the viewer to gradually discover a narrative and interpreted the queen as the person in power in the scene, which for Firestone provides both a "brilliantly imagined and executed" sexual metaphor and a mystery regarding its meaning.
Screen Rant big cat J. David Spurlock fine art