The Capture of Carthage by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's 'The Capture of Carthage' (1725) is a young man's painting. He was 29 years old and determined to pack the entire fury of a Roman siege into one enormous canvas. It worked: the Metropolitan Museum of Art calls it a masterclass in theatrical battle painting.

Start with the fallen soldier in the foreground, directly beneath the white horse. His body is foreshortened, his armor already cast aside. That pool of ultramarine blue in the lower left belongs to him or someone just like him, a deliberate, quiet note of grief in the middle of a victory parade.

Then look up. The commander on the rearing horse is pure Rococo theater. His cuirass catches the brightest light, his flag fills the upper right quadrant like a sail, and his face is lifted toward something we cannot see. Tiepolo was already famous for his frescoed ceilings in Venice; this easel painting shows him testing how much drama oil paint can hold.

The city burns in the background, a narrow strip of smoke and towers that is easy to miss on a phone screen. Rome really did burn Carthage for 17 days in 146 BC. The painting commemorates a triumph, but the body in the foreground tells the other half of the story.

A young painter, a dead empire, and one subdued splash of blue to remind you who paid for the view.