Königin von Saba vor Salomon

The Queen of Sheba came to Jerusalem, the Bible says, to test King Solomon's famous wisdom with hard questions, bringing gold, spices and precious stones. Tintoretto painted her visit around 1543 or 1544 in a long, low format, one of four Old Testament scenes in this room, and the road that brought the set to Vienna runs through England. By 1635 all four were listed in the collection of the Duke of Buckingham, the royal favourite murdered in 1628. When civil war broke out in England his son went into exile, and the family's pictures were sold off in Antwerp. The four pictures were acquired in 1649, the year King Charles I was executed. They were later kept at Prague Castle and reached the Vienna gallery only in 1880.