Modern critics note that the dramatic sotto in su canvas marks the entry of Bolognese quadratura to Venice; Fumiani had studied with the perspective painter Domenico degli Ambrogi.

John Ruskin, in his typical disdain of all post-Quattrocento works, described the ceiling oil painting as a: sorrowful lesson...All the mischief that Paul Veronese did may be seen in the halting and hollow magnificences of them;—all the absurdities, either of painting or piety, under afflatus of vile ambition.

Roof puffed up and broken through, as it were, with breath of the fiend from below, instead of pierced by heaven's light from above; the rags and ruins of Venetian skill, honour, and worship, exploded all together sky-high.

Miracles of frantic mistake, of flaunting and thunderous hypocrisy,—universal lie, shouted through speaking-trumpets...(It is) the most curious example in Europe of the vulgar dramatic effects of painting.

[2] John Crowley's novel The Solitudes, his first volume in the Ægypt series, has an extended response to the painting.