Neptune Offering Gifts to Venice

This painting in the Sala delle Quattro Porte is one of the last public works commissioned by the Venetian Republic. As its thousand years of history drew to a close, the city commissioned this painting of Neptune pouring out the treasures of the sea and the riches of commerce before Venice. It was commissioned from Tiepolo to replace a lost painting by Tintoretto. The dating is controversial because of the painting's stylistic anomalies. In homage to the context, the work takes up motifs typical of the golden age of Venetian art.