Zugno renders this majestic encounter on the shores of Alexandria with a luminous palette and energetic brushwork. The work features a dazzling array of elegantly-attired figures whom Zugno rhythmically arranges throughout the atmospheric environment as if dramatis personae on an elaborate stage set. Executed in the 1740s, the grand horizontal composition was, almost certainly, originally part of a magnificent decorative ensemble filling a vast room in an eighteenth-century Italian palazzo.

Depictions of the meeting of Antony and Cleopatra proliferated during the 1740s, when Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, with whom Zugno studied and collaborated, depicted the subject on several occasions. One such rendition appears in Tiepolo's fresco cycle that fills the ballroom of Venice's Palazzo Labia, from which Zugno drew inspiration. Indeed, the present work was previously attributed to Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's eldest son, Giandomenico.

As first recounted by Plutarch, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra (the last.mes mber of the Ptolemaic dynasty to rule Egypt) and the Roman general Marc Anthony (ruler of the eastern half of the Roman Empire) were lovers and military allies. Their melodrama of lust, passion, and anguish inspired generations of artists, who translated their triumphs and ultimate deaths into visual, poetic, and operatic form.

Here, Zugno depicts Anthony's return to Alexandria following a successful military campaign in western Asia. Cleopatra has come to greet the returning hero, still wearing his military dress, who presents her with the spoils of war. Wearing a white turban and gold robe, Artavasdes, the captured king of Armenia, stands at right as chests of booty are unloaded from the vessel. Although ostensibly set in Egypt, the scene could have transpired in Zugno's native Italy: the blond-haired Cleopatra wears a type of silver gown then fashionable in Venice.