Quintus Fabius Maximus Before the Senate of Carthage

When Tiepolo painted this in the late 1720s, Venice was still a republic, about a decade past its last war with the Ottomans, which had cost it the Peloponnese. The Dolfins, one of its old patrician families, filled the great hall of their palace with ten scenes from the history of another republic, ancient Rome. This tall canvas hung beside the central Triumph of Marius, now in New York. It shows a Roman embassy at Carthage in 218 BC, sent to protest the capture of Saguntum, a Spanish town allied to Rome. The Roman historian Florus tells how the leader, Quintus Fabius Maximus, said he carried war and peace in a fold of his toga and told the Carthaginian senators to choose. They shouted for war, and he shook the fold loose. Tiepolo turns Fabius away from us, gripping that heavy blue drapery, so his face stays hidden. The series was sold off in 1872, and this canvas reached the Hermitage in 1934 together with four of its companions.