God the Father over the Piazza San Marco

Look down on the Piazza San Marco from above, and one detail fixes the year. At the foot of the great bell-tower stands the Loggetta, the low marble porch that Jacopo Sansovino had only just finished in 1540, so this bird's-eye view of the square cannot be older than that. Above the rooftops hovers God the Father, set over the ceremonial heart of Venice. The panel was the middle of three that hung in the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi, the office where the Republic's treasurers kept their accounts. From that high vantage the whole civic stage is laid out, the basilica, the campanile, the arcades where officials and merchants crossed every day. The paint still carries the Venice of 1540, a square being rebuilt in marble while the magistrates worked below.