The Origin of the Milky Way

The Origin of the Milky Way retells the classical myth of how the band of stars came to be, showing the god Jupiter raising his infant son Heracles to the breast of the sleeping Juno so that the child, by suckling her milk, might gain immortality. One of a series of mythological canvases Jacopo Tintoretto painted for the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, the picture adds peacocks and a flying eagle to the celestial scene. Painted about 1575, near the height of the Venetian master’s power, it displays the dramatic foreshortening, rich colour and grand movement that made Tintoretto the most theatrical painter of the late Renaissance in Venice.