Hannibal recognises the head of his brother Hasdrubal

This is early Tiepolo, painted around 1729 when he was still in his early thirties and building a name in Venice. A rich Venetian family, the Dolfin, handed him one of those career-making jobs: a set of enormous canvases of Roman history for the grand hall of their palace. That is why the picture is so strangely tall and narrow, close to four metres high. It was built to run up the wall of a ballroom. The scene is one of the cruellest in ancient warfare. During the long war between Rome and Carthage, the general Hannibal was waiting for his brother Hasdrubal to reach him with a relieving army. Instead the Romans, having beaten and killed Hasdrubal, flung his severed head into Hannibal's camp. Tiepolo catches the instant Hannibal looks down and understands what he is seeing. The Dolfin series was broken up and sold long ago, its huge canvases now spread among museums, and this one hangs today in Vienna.