4 Apollo and Phaethon ca. 1731 Oil on canvas 64.1 x 47.6 cm (25/4 x 18% in.) Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.86.257 PROVENANCE EXHIBITIONS 294n.4; Giambattista Tiepolo 1998, 33, 37, Veil-Picard collection, France, until Fort Worth 1993, no. 8. 112, fig. 14; Pedrocco 2002, 219-20, about 1960; private collection, fig. 7I.2.K Switzerland; sold, Sotheby's, London, BIBLIOGRAPHY December n, 1985, lot 19, to Bob P. Conisbee, Levkoff, and Rand 1991, Habolt and Co., New York; sold 161—64, fig. 42; Brown 1993, 167—68, to the Los Angeles County Museum fig. 8; Gemin and Pedrocco 1993, of Art, 1986. 268, fig. io2b; Christiansen 1996, 292, THE STORY OF APOLLO AND PHAETHON 1719-20 fresco for the Palazzo Baglioni in is best known from Ovid's moving 1 Massanzago, near Padua. By contrast, in the Los interpretation from the Metamorphoses (1:750- Angeles composition Tiepolo presents the psy- 2:380). When aspersions were cast on the divine chologically taut moment in which Apollo vainly parentage of Phaethon—son of the mortal attempts to dissuade his son from his imprudent Clymene and the sun god, Apollo—his mother desire to drive the chariot. Father and son stand brought the young man to Apollo's heavenly at center, bathed in an aureole of light. Their palace to meet his father. After warmly embrac- gestures echo one another: Apollo raises his arm ing his son, Apollo granted Phaethon one wish, to ward off his son's entreaties while Phaethon and the young man impetuously asked to drive gestures urgently at the horses and—foreshad- the chariot of the sun. Apollo tried to dissuade owing later events—points to Scorpio in the Phaethon from this rash request, but—incapable zodiac behind him. Meanwhile, three horses of overcoming his son's steadfast insistence rear up at bottom right, barely restrained by the and rushed by the departure of the goddess of winged Hours. At the top of the canvas, Saturn, dawn—Apollo unwillingly assented. Apollo the god of time, rises, bearing his scythe in instructed his son carefully, but the steep path ominous anticipation of Phaethon's impending across the sky and the unmanageable horses doom. Tiepolo paid close attention to the clas- overwhelmed the young man, who quickly lost sical text, carefully representing such Ovidian control of the chariot and veered too close to details as the monumental marble column of the zodiac. Scorpio thrashed his tail in response Apollo's palace; the golden chariot, attended by to the heat, terrifying Phaethon, who dropped the Hours; and the personifications of the four the reins. The horses bolted wildly across the seasons at center right: Spring bearing a garland skies, scorching heaven and earth, until Zeus of flowers, Summer with wheat and a flaming threw a thunderbolt to regain control of the sun, torch, Autumn holding a crown of grape leaves, demolishing the chariot and sending Phaethon 2 and Winter as a bearded man huddled at rear. plunging to his death. The sketch at the Los Angeles County Artists depicting this myth were usually Museum of Art represents a frescoed ceiling for attracted to the dynamism of Phaethon's fall, a the Palazzo Archinto in Milan (fig. 4.1), destroyed subject Tiepolo himself had painted in an early by an American bombardment in August 1943. 33