Der Raub der Europa

Veronese painted this around 1578 not for the state but for a private Venetian collector, Jacopo Contarini, and it only reached the Doge's Palace in 1713, a gift from the family's heirs. There it was hung in the anticollegio, the room where foreign ambassadors sat waiting to be received by Venice's rulers, so this was a picture they studied to pass the time. The story comes from Ovid: the god Jupiter has taken the shape of a gentle white bull to carry off the princess Europa, and one of her feet is already being kissed. Veronese tells it in stages across the canvas, the same figures shown again, smaller, in the distance, being walked toward the water and the sea crossing to come.