oil on canvas

The sketch illustrates a celebrated passage from Virgil's Aeneid describing how Neptune calmed the winds to save Aeneas from shipwreck. Neptune, his arm raised, commands the winds to desist. Jupiter stands in front of the portico of a circular temple. In 1764–66 Tiepolo decorated a room in the Palacio Real, Madrid, with an apotheosis of Aeneas; the sketch may be related to this project. (Metropolitan Museum of Art)