Gastmahl des Königs Belsazar

In the Book of Daniel, King Belshazzar of Babylon holds a great feast and has his guests drink from the gold and silver vessels his father had taken from the Temple in Jerusalem. A hand appears and writes on the palace wall, and only the prophet Daniel can read the words, Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. The kingdom, he tells the king, has been weighed and found wanting, and that same night Belshazzar is killed. Tintoretto put the writing on the wall at the upper right, but it came out garbled, as MENE MEN THEHEL VFARSIN. He painted the scene around 1543 or 1544, in his mid-twenties, as one of four Old Testament stories in long, low pictures that hang together in this room.