Triumph of the Arts

In 1730 the Archinto family had a young Venetian painter fresco the ceilings of their palace in Milan, and the largest room went to Architecture, Painting, Sculpture, Music and Mathematics, rising towards Apollo and Minerva. Tiepolo worked this canvas out first, before the painted architecture meant to frame the ceiling had been designed, which is why his figures hang in a bare ocher void with nothing around them to sit against. On the night of 13 August 1943 Allied bombs struck Palazzo Archinto and gutted the interior. The frescoes burned. One fragment of the ceiling was recovered and is kept in the Castello Sforzesco, and three oil sketches like this one, now in Lisbon, New York and Los Angeles, carry most of what is known of that room.