Christ Healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda

The Gospel of John tells of a pool in Jerusalem called Bethesda, ringed by porches where the sick lay waiting. Every so often an angel came down and stirred the water, and the first person to get in afterwards was healed. One man had been ill for 38 years and never made it, because nobody would carry him down. Christ told him to pick up his bed and walk.

Giandomenico Tiepolo sets the story under a classical colonnade and lets the angel come in head first from the top of the canvas, wings spread wide, diving at the water like a bird. The sick, the old and the lame crowd in from the left, and Christ stands alone in the open middle of the paving. At the right edge the miracle has already happened. A bare-legged man bends under a rolled-up bed slung across his back and carries it away, exactly as he was told.

The Louvre dates the canvas only to the third quarter of the 18th century. Its pendant, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, is exactly the same size and hangs beside it in the same room.