L'Adoration des Rois

By 1753 Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was the most sought-after painter in Europe, and he was spending those years in Würzburg, in southern Germany, covering a prince-bishop's new palace with the largest ceiling fresco ever painted. But fresco needs wet plaster, and plaster will not set in a cold German winter. So in the off-season Tiepolo turned to canvas, and this towering Adoration, over four metres tall, was one of those winter pictures, made for the abbey church at Münsterschwarzach nearby. He staged the scene like theatre, on the broken steps of a ruined temple, and framed it with large figures seen from behind, so your eye is pushed past their shoulders toward the kneeling king and the child. The blues and golds here are the same palette he was floating across those Würzburg ceilings.