Moving from Canada to California to start my job at Chapman University was a big transition. There were exciting moments, like meeting new colleagues and getting my own office, and less-than-exciting moments, in particular spending a lot of time at the DMV getting a California driver’s license and trying to import my beloved VW Beetle. In the end the Beetle had to go back to Canada, and I faced the daunting task of finding a decent used car. Thankfully, with the expert help of a car guru friend in Toronto, I managed to find a 1998 Toyota Corolla with only 63,000 miles.

The car was in fine form mechanically, but aesthetically it was a bit challenged. The headliner (the fabric lining the interior of the roof) was in bad shape; ripped and sagging, it needed to be changed asap. What started as a bit of a joke – that I wanted to get Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night installed in its place – got really fun when my colleague, Eric Chimenti, reminded me that I could, in fact, get anything I wanted printed large enough to be used for the task. It was a temptation too great to pass up! After much searching, I found the perfect image and measured the car. Eric got the image prepped and printed and then it was off to California Auto Upholstery to get it installed. My reliable and not super exciting ’98 Corolla now hides a masterpiece – get inside and you’ll find that the sky opens up again, thanks to Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s Virtue and Nobility Triumphing over Ignorance (1744-1745).

An eighteenth-century Venetian artist, Tiepolo was one of the greatest decorative painters of all time. His ethereal visions dissolve solid architecture, opening up light- filled skies populated with hauntingly impassive beauties. He depicted sacred stories, histories, legends, and allegorical celebrations of Venetian noble families all with the same elegant ease. His fame took him to Madrid to immortalize the Spanish monarchy in the Royal Palace (1762-66) and to Würzberg, Germany, where a vision of Apollo and a cast of characters from around the world float and lounge at the top of a monumental staircase in an outlandishly oversized commemoration of a minor German prince. He specialized in images composed in a way known as di sotto in sù – ‘from below, looking up’ – where all of the elements of a scene are arranged to mimic the obstructions and distortions that happen to objects (bodies, architecture) in space seen from far below.

The scene I chose for my Corolla is typical Tiepolo. The painting was done for the ceiling of the family palace of wealthy Venetian nobles. All the figures are depicted di sotto in sù, and the putti – the winged babies – tumble and spin in the clouds. The colours are light and yet rich, the orange of Virtue’s gown shimmering like an extension of the sun on her breast. Virtue and Nobility – standing in for the Barbarigo family’s good qualities and heritage – are coolly regal and assuredly self-controlled, while Ignorance, her robes the brown, green, and blue of an iridescent beetle, hides her face in despair at her defeat. She and her companion bat are now forever banished to the back seat of the car.