O rapto de Europa

This is early Tiepolo, painted around 1720 when he was still in his twenties and not yet the master of the vast, sunlit ceilings that would make him famous across Europe. It is one of a set of four small pictures of Ovid's myths that once hung together in a house in Belluno, north of Venice. The subject is one of Jupiter's disguises, the king of the gods turned into a gentle white bull to carry off the princess Europa, who sits on his back in the moment before he swims out to sea. The colours are still dark and full of deep shadow, learned from his teacher Piazzetta. For a long time the picture was not even recognised as Tiepolo's, and passed under the name of the older Venetian painter Sebastiano Ricci.