Pope St Clement Adoring the Trinity

In the later 1730s Clemens August, Archbishop-Elector of Cologne and younger brother of the elector of Bavaria, ordered an altarpiece from Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in Venice. It was meant for the church of the canonesses in the north wing of Nymphenburg, the Bavarian rulers' summer palace outside Munich, and its subject was chosen with him in mind. Pope Clement, who led the Church in the first century, was the patron's own name saint. Tiepolo shows him kneeling at the altar of a grand Baroque basilica while the Trinity appears to him on clouds among angels. A smaller, highly finished oil sketch for the composition is now in the National Gallery in London, and there the saint is still taller and does not yet lift his head towards the vision. The finished canvas is almost five metres high, and its frame was designed by Joseph Effner, the Bavarian court architect. In 1742, a few years after it was painted, Clemens August crowned his own brother Holy Roman Emperor in Frankfurt.