Marte e Nettuno

This went up on the ceiling of the room where the doge received foreign ambassadors. A fire in 1574 destroyed the old decoration, Palladio designed the replacement, and Veronese painted the canvases between 1575 and 1578, through the plague that took perhaps a quarter of Venice in those years and Titian with it in 1576. None of that is overhead. Mars stands for what the republic could do on land and Neptune for what it could do at sea, the winged lion of St Mark sits between them, two putti hold a helmet and a shell, and the campanile of St Mark's rises behind. Ambassadors waited their turn below, on benches along the panelled walls, facing the doge and his councillors on the tribune at the far end.