La Justice

In 1508 the German merchants' great warehouse on the Grand Canal, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, had just been rebuilt after a fire, and its outer walls were handed to painters to fresco. Giorgione took the showpiece front toward the water. The side wall, facing a narrow lane toward the Merceria shops, went to Titian, then barely known. This figure of a woman with a sword was his part, first recorded as Judith and only later called Justice. Venice's damp air is cruel to outdoor paint, and within a few decades the frescoes were already flaking away. What survives is a rescued fragment, lifted from the wall in 1966 and moved indoors to the Ca' d'Oro, one of the few traces left of Titian's first public work.