Finding of Jesus in the Temple

You are standing, more or less, in the building this painting was made for. Around 1700 Giovanni Antonio Fumiani painted this Finding of Jesus in the Temple for the Scuola della Carita, the confraternity whose halls later became the Gallerie dell'Accademia. The scene is the moment Mary and Joseph, after three days of searching, find the 12-year-old Jesus in the temple, seated among the learned elders and holding his own in the argument. Fumiani was a master of large spaces. His best-known work is the huge ceiling of the nearby church of San Pantalon, one of the biggest painted canvases in the city, which took him some 20 years and cost him his life when he fell from the scaffolding in 1710. Here, on a smaller stage, he arranges the figures on steps and columns so the boy at the centre stands out plainly to anyone looking up.