Tiepolo was the preeminent Italian painter of the eighteenth century. His style is at its most exuberant in this representation of Flora, Roman goddess of flowers and spring. In an inviting garden, under a bright blue sky, Flora rides into the scene on a chariot pulled by winged putti. This picture’s patron was Count Francesco Algarotti, an envoy to the Dresden court of Augustus III. Algarotti commissioned this painting and its pendant (today in the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg), as gifts for Count Heinrich von Brühl, chief minister to Augustus. The fountain in the background alludes to a public sculpture that Brühl had commissioned, and, writing to Brühl, Algarotti drew a flattering comparison between the transformations brought about by Flora in ancient myth and those brought about by his correspondent in modern Dresden: “The influence of Flora . . . transforms the most savage places into delightful precincts.”