Diana and Callisto

Around 1720 Tiepolo was in his mid-twenties, still deciding what kind of painter to be, and this canvas catches him mid-change. It is one of four mythological scenes, most likely made to line a single room in a Venetian nobleman's house. The dark shadows he had learned from older masters are giving way here to the lighter, airier colour he took from Sebastiano Ricci, a leading Venetian painter of the day. The story is from Ovid. Diana, goddess of the hunt and sworn to chastity with her nymphs, discovers that one of them, Callisto, is pregnant by Jupiter. Tiepolo sets the moment outdoors under a wide sweep of sky, the open, sunlit kind of setting that would soon become his trademark, the nymphs crowding in to expose Callisto as Diana turns away.