Apollo and Phaëthon

Apollo and Phaëthon, painted in 1731 and now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, depicts the myth in which Phaëthon — son of Apollo — persuades his divine father to let him drive the solar chariot, loses control, and is struck down by Zeus with a thunderbolt before the world is incinerated. The myth was a staple of Baroque and Rococo ceiling painting precisely because it justified the most spectacular aerial effects available to a painter: a chariot and horses careening out of control across the sky while the terrified driver plunges toward the earth. Tiepolo's 1731 treatment belongs to his early mature period and demonstrates the aerial compositional invention that would define his greatest ceiling programs. LACMA's Italian painting collection, while secondary to its East Asian and American holdings, includes works by Tiepolo that reflect the museum's ambition to represent European art comprehensively. The Phaëthon subject also carries a cultural meta-meaning: the excess of youthful ambition, the fatal consequence of demanding access to divine power.

The celestial chariot and its panicking horses are rendered in urgent aerial perspective, with Phaëthon's figure thrown against the light-filled sky. Tiepolo's handling of the foreshortened horse forms and the swirling drama of the horses' reins shows his early mastery of difficult aerial composition. The warm, golden light of the solar scene is punctuated by cooler passages where the chariot diverges from its ordained path.