Teseo uccide il Minotauro

Around 1505 in Venice this small panel was never meant to hang on a wall. It was built into furniture, most likely a marriage chest or the headboard of a bed, part of a set that also showed the wedding of Bacchus and Ariadne. So the subject suits a wedding: Theseus finds his way out of the Cretan labyrinth and kills the monster at its centre. Cima painted the maze as a spiralling wall open to the sky, and broke one corner away so we can see inside. The strangest touch is the Minotaur. The old myth gives it a bull's head on a man's body; Cima reverses it, a man's head and chest rising from a bull's frame, run through and sinking as Theseus stands over him.