Cleansing of the temple

Material, technology: oil, canvas

Size: 424 x 195 cm

Description: Though painted past the zenith of Zanchi’s career, it still echoes the dramatic force and expressive characterization of his main works. Christ’s crushing gesture, the merchants’ distorted demoniac faces are rendered with the same passion as in a former Venetian sketch 13 years earlier. The enlarged scale of the classical background architecture, the subdued chiaroscuro and the light colour drain much of the picture’s expressiveness. Through the commissioner of Dalmatia, Istria and Epirus, an art patron and library founder, baron Steffaneo-Carnea the painting went from Koper to the Academy of Vienna in 1801 and together with the other two Zanchi pictures to Pannonhalma in 1803. At first they adorned the walls of the church sanctuary; after the church renovation of 1875, they were removed to the library, and finally to the walls of the staircase.