Time Unveiling Truth

Around 1745 Tiepolo painted this for a palace in Verona, probably for Giovanni Girolamo Orti, whose house near the church of the Scalzi kept it until the 19th century. The subject was a favourite of the age. Time, an old winged man with his scythe and hourglass, pulls the clothes away from a young woman who stands for Truth, the old idea that whatever is hidden will come to light sooner or later. The canvas is more than two metres tall, painted to hang high on a wall. In the 19th century it left Verona for Paris and changed hands several times there. The dealer Rudolph Heinemann bought it in 1960 and took it to New York, and in December 1961 he sold it to the Museum of Fine Arts for 210,000 dollars.