The Defeat of Sennacherib

King Sennacherib was the Assyrian who in the eighth century BC assembled a large army against the rebellious Hezechiah, King of Judah, and laid seige to the holy city of Jerusalem. As divine punishment for this blasphemous conduct God sent his angel to destory the Assyrian camp.

This violent scene, with its confused mass of bodies, dangerously waving battle standards and horses bolting, stumbling and crashing to the ground, is typical in its subject-matter and composition of much of Tempesta's work.