Morte del console Lucio Giunio Bruto nel duello con Arunte

Two men run each other through on horseback. One is Lucius Junius Brutus, the first consul of the newborn Roman Republic. The other is Aruns, son of the last king Brutus had helped drive out, and in the old story the two meet in battle and kill one another at the same instant. Tiepolo painted this around 1728 as one of ten enormous canvases of Roman history for the grand hall of the Dolfin palace in Venice, a patrician family lining its home with the founding virtues of the Republic, a subject that flattered proud, aristocratic Venice, itself a republic centuries old. He was still in his early thirties and already the most inventive painter in the city. The pictures hung together in Venice until 1930, when this one was sold to the museum in Vienna.