Madonna in Glory between Saints George and Romuald

Look at the lower right of this altarpiece and you will find a small still life that explains the whole picture, a bishop's mitre and crook lying discarded on the ground. They belong to Saint Romuald, the hermit in the white robe, who founded the Camaldolese monks and famously refused to be made an abbot, turning down the office those objects stand for. Beside him stands a very different kind of saint, young George the soldier, in armour and oddly melancholy. Above them the Virgin sits enthroned on clouds among angels. Tiepolo painted this around 1735, and it was almost certainly a private commission from Milan rather than an altarpiece for a church, made for a palazzo near the Porta Romana gate on that city's south side.