# Time Unveiling Truth

- By: Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Italian, 1708–1787)
- Date: 1740–45
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: 43.3 × 26.5 cm (17 1/16 × 10 7/16 in.); Framed: 52.1 × 35.6 × 3.9 cm (20 1/2 × 14 × 1 1/2 in.)
- Culture: Italy
- Credit line: Harold T. Martin Trust
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/51130)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/68c58d97b677e855e7bc166fdd15cbdd.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni crafted a complex mythological scene in this small-scale work, most likely a preparatory sketch for a larger, unexecuted or unknown painting. Father Time pulls aside a large swath of drapery to reveal Truth at the center of the composition, radiating revelatory light from the sun. The figures of Envy, winged and wearing a mask, and Discord, with a writhing tail, lurk in the shadow to the right. Beside Truth stands Justice, holding the pair of scales that signals her impartiality. Last, in the lower right, the personifications of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture hold the tools of their trades.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0