Roman Matrons Making Offerings to Juno

Born and trained in Venice, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo enjoyed an illustrious career as an eighteenth-century Baroque painter. Roman Matrons Offering Gifts to Juno was one of four over door panels painted for a Venetian palace and depicts a scene from Livy’s History of Rome. During the Second Punic War, the temple of Juno Regina, which stood on the Aventine Hill in Rome, was struck by lightning. Livy describes how the city’s matrons brought offerings of gifts and jewels from their dowries to the temple to appease Juno, Queen of Heaven, represented here by her distinguishing attribute, the peacock.