Apollo, his right hand extended, holding a royal scepter, lithely arrives on a bank of clouds, cradling in his left arm his lyre (he is the god of music and the arts). Mercury-the messenger of the gods-flies in with a crown for the enthroned figure of Spain with her lion. Fame sounds his trumpet while Jupiter commands the proceedings above his soaring eagle. The Met owns two equally brilliant but differing oil sketches, or modelli, for a ceiling adjacent to the throne room of the Palacio Real in Madrid. Tiepolo had been summoned to the court in 1762.