Heliodorus and Onias

Tiepolo painted this in 1724, when he was still in his late twenties and sharpening the theatrical manner that would later fill ceilings across Europe. The subject is an old warning about greed. Heliodorus, an officer sent by a foreign king to seize the treasure stored in the Temple at Jerusalem, is caught in the act. As he reaches the vault a rider on a golden horse charges him down, and two winged youths fall on him with whips, driving him back across the marble in his red tunic and gleaming breastplate. Raphael had painted this same expulsion two centuries earlier on a wall of the Vatican, and every ambitious young painter knew it. Tiepolo answers it with steeper space and harder light. Off to the side the high priest Onias stands at his altar, hands raised, the prayer that summoned all this still on his lips.