Perseus Freeing Andromeda

A few years before he painted this, Paolo Veronese had been summoned before the Inquisition in Venice. His huge Last Supper was crowded with dogs, drunkards and foreign soldiers, and the tribunal wanted to know why. He refused to repaint it and simply changed the title. Mythology asked no such questions. Here Perseus drops out of the sky on the left to fight the sea monster, while on the right Andromeda stands chained to her rock, pale and lit against the dark, waiting to be freed. Veronese gave the story all the silk, flesh and open sky that a sacred scene was no longer allowed. He painted it in the late 1570s, near the end of his life. By the 18th century the canvas had entered the French royal collection, and later painters kept borrowing this arrangement when they told the same rescue.