悪徳に雷を放つユピテル

This was made to be seen from below. Around 1553 the young Veronese, barely 25, painted it for the ceiling of a chamber in the Doge's Palace in Venice where the Council of Ten met, the feared committee that handled the Republic's security. Jupiter leans out of the sky and flings his thunderbolts down at figures tumbling in panic, the vices being driven off, a plain message about state justice aimed at anyone who glanced up. Veronese uses the steep upward angle to sling the god's legs almost out of the frame toward you. It stayed on that ceiling for well over two centuries, until French troops carried it to Paris after Napoleon's conquest of Venice, and it has hung in the Louvre since.