1999 The Rediscovery of Carpaccio's "Supper at Emmaus", Dated 1513, in the Church of San Salvador

W.R. Rearick

1999 - Studies in Venetian Art and Conservation – Save Venice Inc.

It has become increasingly unusual for a major masterpiece of Renaissance painting to emerge from obscurity and critical oblivion, but it is virtually unknown for a large work that has been on prominent public view for almost five hundred years to be suddenly accorded its just place in the currents of Venetian  Renaissance art. Nonetheless, this is precisely what has occurred recently, and Save Venice has played a significant role in its rehabilitation as a major work of art. The large (101.4 x 146.25 in.) canvas that depicts the Supper at Emmaus has occupied the left wall of the Contarini Chapel in the monumental church of San Salvador at least since the sixteenth century, but its critical misfortune began almost at once when Francesco Sansovino published his guide book, Venetia Città Nobilissima e Singolare in 1581, in which he described the picture as a work of Giovanni Bellini. He praised it as one of Bellini’s finest works, but sixty-five years after his death, Bellini’s character as a painter had already lost definition, and Sansovino was not alone in ascribing works by other artists to his brush. In any  case, the damage was done, since subsequent critics either placidly repeated Sansovino’s attribution, or, aware that there was something wrong with the  report, they cast about for an alternative name, suggesting Vittore Belliniano, Benedetto Diana, Girolamo da Santacroce, Pier Maria Pennacchi, or even  Giorgione as its author.

Only one historian, the subtle and acute Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, suggested in 1871 that the Supper at Emmaus was by Vittore Carpaccio, but his observation elicited no comment whatsoever from contemporary scholars, who seem to have regarded it as an unfortunate lapse on the part of this eminent connoisseur. The result was that subsequent authors, recognizing the uneasy attribution to Bellini as doubtful and failing to come up with a viable alternative, progressively ignored the picture, even arriving at the point of dismissing it as a modern copy after a lost work by a Bellini follower. Such a negative response toits quality was also due to the fact that over the centuries the Supper at Emmaus had accumulated a thick layer of dirty varnish and unnecessary overpainting, a yellowish veil that made it look more like a poor 19th century chromo lithograph than a Renaissance painting. Commanding though its composition remained, the Supper at Emmaus seemed destined for oblivion.

When Sydney J. Freedberg, the most eminent American scholar of Italian Renaissance art, died on May 6, 1997, it was suggested that Save Venice commission
a major restoration project in his memory, given that he had been a founding member of its board in 1971. Recognizing that the occasion required that we restore a work of primary importance, it was suggested that we should at long last clarify the mystery that still shrouded the S. Salvador picture. Despite doubts in some quarters that we would find anything of interest under the grime, the Superintendent of Fine Arts, Giovanna Nepi Scirè, agreed to a preliminary investigation of the project. Fortunately, the eminent Italian painting conservator, Ottorino Nonfarmale, was available to undertake this intervention, a delicate procedure that was carried out between January and September 1998. In the meantime, the present writer reconsidered its attribution, and simultaneously but independently, Nonfarmale, Nepi Scirè, and I arrived at the conclusion that the Supper at Emmaus was a work of Bellini’s primary pupil, Vittore Carpaccio.

Comparison with such established works as the Holy Family (Avignon, Musée du Petit Palais), which is datable to about 1502, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia), which bears the date 1510, and the Consecration of Saint Stephen (Berlin, Staatliche Museen) of 1511 fully confirms Carpaccio’s authorship, and provides precise formal analogies circumscribed by a rather narrow range of dates. Indeed, among his contemporaries, Carpaccio alone is so fully documented by signed, dated, or otherwise securely recorded works. The most notable gap in this chronology is precisely the year 1513. Two  years earlier, he had painted the large mural, View of Jerusalem (formerly in the Gonzaga collection in Mantua), and had begun the cycle of canvases for the Scuola di Santo Stefano. This cycle, which was concluded in 1520, is stylistically closest to Supper at Emmaus in adumbrating the drier, more severe texture and color typical of his late works. The S. Salvador canvas is the only picture dated to the year 1513. As the restoration progressed, Nonfarmale uncovered two inscriptions that had been overpainted at an early date and were therefore not available to previous scholars. The first was the prominent date at the lower left, MDXIII , and at lower right HIE R PRIOL s/ ANN . XXX VIII . These allowed us to conclude that the picture was painted in 1513, and that it was commissioned by Gerolamo Priuli, who was thirty-eight years old at the time. This, in turn, disproved the recent tendency to date the picture to about 1534, and to identify the donor as Contarini, whose brother, the Cardinal Patriarch Contarini, owned the chapel where it would be installed.

Simultaneously, and quite independently, Lorenzo Finocchi Ghersi, a brilliant young scholar from the University of Udine, published an article in the 1998 issue of Arte Veneta in which he presented new documentation for many works of art in the church of S. Salvador. Prominent among them was the Supper at Emmaus, which he suggested was a commission from Gerolamo Priuli for his private palace, a work destined to be given at a later date, close to 1534, to the church of S. Salvador, where Priuli planned to be buried. It was first installed, at least temporarily, in the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament owned by the Contarini. Ghersi also suggested that Priuli’s role in the temporary truce that Venice signed with the Ottoman ambassador in 1507 occasioned this gesture, since Priuli himself promoted the treaty in order to protect his banking and commercial interests in the eastern Mediterranean. Ghersi did not confront the then still-open question of the authorship of the Supper at Emmaus.

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    • 2008 Sebastian: A Saint for Venice

    Frederick Ilchman

    Excerpted from Studies in Venetian Art and Conservation, 2008

    According to tradition, in the year 827 or 828, the merchants Buono da Malamocco and Rustico de Torcello smuggled the body of Saint Mark from Alexandria to Venice. This translation of Mark's relics immediately dislodged the warrior saint Theodore as the city's chief protector, and the iconography of Saint Mark and his lion multiplied throughout the Serenissima. The Fourth Crusade in 1204 brought part of the head of Saint John the Baptist and a fragment of the True Cross to Venice. Venetian churches and scuole claimed many other relics, including the head of Saint George, a thorn from Christ's crown, and the whole bodies of Saints Stephen and Roch.

    Surveying the Renaissance paintings and sculptures produced in Venice, however, the plethora of images of Saint Sebastian makes clear that this saint also enjoyed a place of honor. Certainly he is distinctive in appearance, as a handsome, nearly nude young man pierced by arrows. As such he stands out, even in groupings of many saints (figs. 1, 4). Nearly every major Venetian painter and sculptor in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries produced images of Sebastian, and many of these are of the highest quality. Peter Humfrey, in compiling a list of saints most commonly represented in altarpieces for Venetian churches in the period of 1450-1530, determined that Sebastian was fifth in popularity overall, with 21 occurrences, trailing only the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, Jerome, and Peter.

    The main explanation of Sebastian's remarkable popularity lay in his role as a protector against bubonic plague, a recurring scourge in daily life, and thus a great motivator to those who commissioned works of art. While Sebastian was highly revered throughout Christendom for his reputation for healing, demand was particularly strong in Venice, given the Serenissima's geographic position as a major port and trading center, and the resulting vulnerability to disease and plague. The prominence of Saint Sebastian in Venetian art can be explained through his function as a heavenly protector from plague, as well as several other aspects of his physical appearance and cult. After surveying the most important texts related to the life of Sebastian, this essay will examine five images of Sebastian by Paolo Veronese, all created between 1558 and 1565, in the church of San Sebastiano. Three further paintings of Sebastian produced in Venice or northern Italy in the period 1500-1525 will allow further conclusions about the saint's iconography. The particular moments in his life that receive pictorial treatment make clear that some aspects of his cult were far more important than others.

    Sebastian's historical record is meager, and the earliest reference to him, from the mid-fourth century, only refers to his existence as a martyr. The first substantial text is a fifth-century document known as the Passio Sancti Sebastiani, which purports to describe events that happened some one hundred fifty years earlier. By this account, Sebastian was a soldier who served in the elite Praetorian guard under the Emperors Maximian and Diocletian. He initially hid his faith to help fellow Christians in prison, and was persuasive in causing many to convert to Christianity and be baptized. Once his Christianity was discovered by the authorities, he was sentenced to be executed by imperial archers, and his body was shot through with so many arrows that it was described as resembling a hedgehog. Left for dead by his executioners, he was nursed back to health by Irene and survived. Sebastian then confronted the astonished emperor, and was finally beaten to death with clubs. The corpse was tossed into the Roman sewer so it could not be recovered, but Sebastian appeared in a dream to another Roman matron and told her the site of his body. Thus it was found and buried in a catacomb on the Appian Way.

    Though his cult was always strong in Rome, and Pope Gregory the Great pronounced Sebastian the third patron saint of Rome (after Peter and Paul), the distribution of portions of his body and other relics throughout Europe brought devotion to Sebastian to many other cities, including Pavia and Milan in particular, which may have been his hometown. Interestingly, the Passio does not mention anything about his role in protection from plague or disease. Only in the year 680 does Sebastian seem to be associated with defense from disease, when a relic of his arm was brought to Pavia and was credited with stopping a plague.

    An expanded treatment of Sebastian's vita was compiled c. 1260 in the readings on the lives of saints known as the Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend) by Jacopo da Voragine. In this text, a key episode emphasizing the bravery of Sebastian involves two brothers, Marcus and Marcellian, who were to be executed for maintaining their Christian faith. Their mother and father took turns to implore their sons to renounce these beliefs and save themselves. Sebastian then exhorted them to accept their martyrdom, telling the parents, "Be without fear! They will not be separated from you, but will go to prepare lasting dwellings for you in Heaven." The authority of Sebastian's words inspired the brothers to seek martyrdom, and converted many of the others present. Diocletian, informed of Sebastian's Christianity, was furious by this betrayal, and "commanded his soldiers to transfix him with arrows." The Golden Legend repeats the vivid description of the first attempt on his life, "The soldiers shot so many arrows at him that he was covered with barbs like a hedgehog." Sebastian survived, however, and returned to rebuke the emperors, saying, "The Lord has recalled me to life, so that I once more might come to you, and reproach you." The details of his demise respect the earlier text: Sebastian is clubbed to death, and his corpse disposed of in the Roman sewer, but he appeared to Lucina, who recovers his body. The text specifies the martyrdom occurred on January 20th in the year 287, and then recounts two posthumous miracles, including how relics of Sebastian brought from Rome stopped the plague in Pavia. The biography concludes with a specific endorsement, attributed to Saint Ambrose, of Sebastian's power to protect against disease:

    The blood of thy holy martyr Sebastian, which was shed in Thy name, makes manifest Thy greatness, O Lord, who through his intercession workest Thy might in the weak, crownest our efforts, and givest health to the sick."

    While the Golden Legend spells out certain episodes in great detail, Sebastian's healing after being shot with arrows is not described at all, nor is there any mention of the role of the Roman matron Saint Irene, previously credited with removing the arrows and healing him. The depiction of Irene's care for Sebastian was relatively rare in Renaissance art, but exploded in popularity in the seventeenth century, given renewed attention to the early saints and martyrs and the Counter-Reformation's encouragement to charitable acts toward the sick and injured.

    In sum, the Golden Legend and other texts offered more than two dozen distinct episodes related to Sebastian's life, death, and posthumous miracles, and several painted cycles in northeast Italy from the fourteenth and fifteen century include many individual scenes. He is clothed in nearly all these images, as the texts require, except for the episode where he is shot with arrows. A thirteenth-century mosaic in the Basilica di San Marco shows a young man dressed in heavy robes, holding a small cross, with no reference to his dramatic near-death experience, nor his eventual martyrdom. Only in the Renaissance did his distinctive and consistent appearance as the beautiful, nearly naked youth, arise.

    This iconography of the handsome Sebastian, pierced with arrows, explains his efficacy as a protector against plague. The emphasis on the arrows and the moment of his near death (rather than the clubs that actually killed him, or any miracle or good deed) shows that Sebastian's power was grounded in this moment of triumph over corporeal suffering. As Louise Marshall has persuasively argued, the conspicuous arrows – symbols of disease and thus signs of punishment from God – are united with the Christian belief that martyrdom brings one closest to Christ's own sacrifice. The contrast of the saint's beauty and torment makes comprehensible the depth of Sebastian's sacrifice for others: "The image of Sebastian, martyred and yet alive, celebrates his resurrection as proof of his inexhaustible capacity to absorb the arrows of the plague on behalf of sinful humanity." Worshippers who contemplated his wounds, and his "Passion-like drama of suffering, death and resurrection," would be protected. Sebastian absorbed the arrows without perishing, and thus would he protect the viewer from the wounds of disease.

    Sebastian appears in this guise in high altar of the church of San Sebastiano, the most prominent depiction of the saint in the church. In this altarpiece (fig. 1), he occupies the middle of a grouping of six saints from different historical periods, an assemblage known as a sacra conversazione, or sacred conversation. The varied poses of the saints draw emphasis to the appearance of the Virgin and Child, lit by heavenly light; they rest on clouds that cast shadows on those below, particularly Sebastian. His centrality in the composition is emphasized since he is tied to one of the massive columns within the picture, and the twists of his body contrast with the stable architecture. His minimal dress also assures that his appearance is not tied to any specific historical period but is instead timeless. Sebastian is not depicted with a palm of martyrdom, underscoring that his torture is ongoing. Bound to the column, it appears as if he has just been shot with arrows and left for dead, and the rest of the saints and the Virgin have traveled to him to honor his steadfastness in the face of death. In this altarpiece and hundreds of other Renaissance images, Sebastian is shown whole and triumphant. These works remind us that Sebastian is the exceptional saint whose static image, as in this altarpiece, shows him being tormented, and thus resembles closely the narrative subject of being shot with arrows. The virtually identical appearance of Sebastian in static and narrative images is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of his iconography.

    The church of San Sebastiano contains the most important cycle of narrative images of Sebastian in Venice. According to Antoinio Niero, the church claimed as a relic one of the arrows that struck Sebastian, and the insignia of an arrow bisecting the letter S is carved in several places in the interior. Despite these connections, the seven paintings devoted to the life of Sebastian only depict five episodes from his life; there was no attempt to survey the range of his deeds recounted in the Golden Legend and present a comprehensive cycle of his life. Instead, as described in other essays in this volume, much of the pictorial decoration of the church of San Sebastiano is devoted to themes other than Saint Sebastian: the Coronation of the Virgin in the sacristy, for example, or the story of Esther told across three large canvases in the nave ceiling.

    In San Sebastiano, the first painting in chronological order of the saint's biography is the large canvas of Sebastian exhorts Marcus and Marcellian to Martyrdom on the left side of the high altar (fig. 2). The Golden Legend offers much detail of the dialogue between the pleading parents, the wavering sons, and the steadfast Sebastian. The saint, the fulcrum of this conflict, is appropriately exactly at the center of the composition. His raised right arm performs a dual gesture, encouraging the two young men toward their fate, while simultaneously pointing upward, toward the promise of the "everlasting crown" of eternal life. In front of a great crowd, Sebastian's words and gestures disclose his faith, putting his own life at risk. Against the great variety of textures of cloth, a specialty of the painter, Sebastian's suit of Renaissance armor is conspicuous, reminding the viewer both of his elite status and how in future episodes he will be stripped of this, and his only protection will come from God.

    The pendant to this canvas, the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (fig. 3) across the presbytery, shows the results of this public declaration in Christianity. Members of an angry crowd tie Sebastian to a frame before he will be beaten to death. The narrative has skipped nearly to the end of the story. The various conversions that Sebastian inspires, the first confrontation with Diocletian, the attempted execution by arrows, his recovery, the second confrontation with Diocletian – all described in the texts just after his encouragement of Marcus and Marcellian – are not depicted here. Instead, the canvas is concerned with the most important day in the life of a Christian martyr, that of his death. The sinister mood, complete with jostling figures and arms bearing clubs at the left and right edges of the picture, has been enhanced by the discoloration of the blue sky, now a threatening orange hue. It should be pointed out that this scene does not exactly duplicate the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian fresco above the balcony of the church (fig. xx). That shows a related but distinct moment, several minutes later in the narrative. In the upper cycle, Sebastian's body is ready to receive the blows of the raised arms, and two richly dressed figures draw attention with rhetorical gestures to the helpless martyr.

    Two other episodes from the life of Saint Sebastian occupy the frescoes of the upper level: the confrontation of Sebastian before Diocletian (fig. xx), where he holds an arrow indicating his triumph over death, and the extraordinary conception of Sebastian shot with Arrows and its pendant Three Archers (figs. xx and xx). The two paintings are separated by the width of the nave, and the actual space of the room plays a role in the torment of the saint. As argued above, the emphasis on arrows of this depiction can be explained by his perceived power to absorb plague on behalf of others.

    An altarpiece by Cima da Conegliano, recently restored by Save Venice, offers an example of Sebastian's prominence when he is not the dedicatee of a church, but rather just one of six saints in a sacra conversazione (fig. 4). This painting, commissioned by a naval captain, was painted about 1500 and now hangs in the Gallerie dell'Accademia. The saints are carefully arranged, contrasting age, gender, and pose. Two graceful female saints, both bearing palms of martyrdom, stand at the edges of the composition and probably represent Catherine and Lucy. Next toward the center are two young men, both soldiers, George in his resplendent armor on the left (his distinctive face may be a portrait of the Giorgio Dragan, the patron), and Sebastian on the right. Whereas George is identifiable through his armor, Sebastian's "costume" is in fact his near absence of clothing. Finally, flanking the enthroned Madonna and Child are two older saints, Nicholas and Anthony Abbot, with the three gold balls (from a famous episode of the generosity of Nicholas) signifying a good deed from the past. Only Sebastiano is shown in the midst of his torment, or indeed in the middle of any action. Stripped of his protection, arrows now pierce him, but he is unbowed. Rather wittily, Cima has painted Sebastian with his arms behind his back standing in front of one of the columns of the arcade, as if he were tied to it, underscoring the sense of present action. He bears his weight primarily on one leg, the contrapposto, or pose of shifted weight that is both graceful and evokes the classical statuary of his ancient Roman context.

    Sometimes Sebastian is shown displaying physical discomfort, as in a panel from an altarpiece painted about 1523 by Palma Vecchio in the church of Santa Maria Formosa, also conserved by Save Venice (fig. 5). Although his body squirms against the tree to which he is tied, only two arrows pierce his flesh (as in the examples by Cima and the high altarpiece by Veronese), and he seems in no danger of death. Indeed, his conspicuous beauty is as prominent as his suffering, and the disjunction here emphasized, between youth and death, compounds the meaning.

    One of the most unnerving images of Sebastian is the life-size figure on canvas by Mantegna, now in the Ca' d'Oro museum (fig. 5). Although Mantegna spent much of his career in Mantua, he was related to Giovanni Bellini by marriage and stayed well informed of artistic developments in Venice. This work was in Mantegna's studio at the time of the artist's death in 1506, and seems to have been painted just beforehand (and perhaps for his own use). Fifteen arrows puncture his skin, and despite these wounds, and although his hands are tied, he approaches the viewer through a stone frame. His pose and musculature recall ancient statues, and his poise belies his obvious wounds. Although there are more arrows than are typically shown with Sebastian, this is certainly not the "hedgehog" appearance described in the texts (and generally only found in paintings well before 1500). Indeed, the arrows are studied and even elegant in their arrangement, with most arrows parallel to at least one other. A modest detail, at the bottom right corner of the painting, makes clear this is a momento mori. A scroll winds around a lit candle, symbol itself of the brevity of human life, and the inscription reads, "NIHIL NISI DIVINVM STABILE EST COETERA FVMVS" ("Only the divine endures, the rest is smoke.") Sebastian survived this brush with death by placing his faith in God. His beauty and youth, while compelling, cannot compare to eternal life.

    Sebastian's popularity rested on his role as a holy protector against plague, yet the subject offered painters the possibility of creating a nearly nude figure in a religious painting, therefore allowing them to demonstrate their skills at one of the most difficult challenges in art, human anatomy. In fact, Paolo Pino's 1548 Dialogo di pittura advised painters to include in their compositions a particularly difficult figure, one incorporating challenging foreshortenings, since this would show off the skill of the artist. Depictions of Saint Sebastian in Venice may even have been considered by painters as a kind of calling card. Finally, the subject also provided artists with the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of the art of antiquity, for example the contropposto pose recalling ancient statuary, as well as classical columns and ruins. As seen in the works discussed above, successfully rendering Sebastian's beautiful body would go far to advertise an artist's ability in the competitive climate of sixteenth-century Venice.

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    • Santa Maria dei Miracoli: Preliminary Work Begins

    Mario Piana

    Superintendency of Monuments

    Excerpted from the 1989 Save Venice Journal

     

    The sadly deteriorating condition of the Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, built in the 1480’s by Pietro Lombardo, has been caused by a number of factors, including atmospheric pollution, a very unfavorable interior microclimate, and the aggressive nature of the lagoon environment itself.

    The entire structure of the church, both inside and out, is faced in different marbles. These reliefs and sculptural decorations, panels, fascia, inserts, and cornices have suffered by far the most damage. In fact, all of the stone materials used in construction – from the Pavonazzetto (“little purple”), Carrara Bardiglio, and “Verona red” marbles to the Istrian limestone, from the Lesbio, Proconnesioand Jassensemarbles to the red and green porphyry, the green Cipollino(“onion skin”) and Verde Anticostone – have been affected to a greater or lesser degree. Everywhere one can observe the phenomena of crumbling, flaking, decementation, cracking and pitting. There is also extensive evidence on the stones of particle deposits, incrustation, and whitish saline efflorescences and subefflorescences.

    We at the Superintendency of Monuments have two primary objectives as we begin this major restoration funded by Save Venice: to contain, or remove, the essential causes of deterioration, and to modify the current microclimate of the interior so as to stabilize thermohygrometric conditions – particularly as we hope the church will once again be host to parishioners and visitors alike.

    Prior to beginning the actual work of restoration, the Superintendency has devoted a great deal of time and effort to preliminary studies, in addition to bibliographical and archival research, and we have prepared a detailed survey of the premises themselves. We have already completed, or are in the process of completing, magnetometric, mineralogical-petrographic and physical-chemical testing. We have also been measuring the speed of sound waves, and conducting various environmental analyses, including monitoring the exchange of vapor between surface and environment, air circulation and surface temperatures. Finally, we are gathering and testing atmospheric particles and pollutants.

    The successive restoration phases, which have yet to be defined in detail, are extremely experimental in nature. At this time, they include the following: overall desalination of the entire stone surface – whether in situor through removal of individual stone blocks to the laboratory for immersion in specially designed tubs; desalination of the underlying brickwork, with the use of absorbent chemicals and materials, temperature controls, and possible washings; and stabilization of the interior environment through a self-regulatory system that will respond to long- and short-term variations in climatic conditions.

    After completion of these essential studies, we will then proceed to repair, refurbish and completely clean the building. Once the restoration and cleaning processes have taken place, we plan to treat all elements with a protective coating of resin.

    Of particular significance to all our efforts is the fact that every aspect of this project – from the preliminary studies and research to proposed solutions to the actual restoration itself – will make an important contribution to the development of new methodologies for use in other major restorations throughout the city of Venice.

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    • Two Altarpieces of John the Baptist by Jacopo Tintoretto

    Frederick Ilchman

    Excerpted from Studies in Venetian Art and Conservation, 2004

     

    Sometimes art conservation not only preserves fragile objects but also sheds light on overlooked or nearly forgotten productions by major artists. A case in point is the recent conservation treatment of two paintings by Jacopo Tintoretto (c. 1518 – 1594). These two pictures were little known or studied. Now this conservation treatment has brought these paintings into the public eye; moreover, their restoration has drawn attention to an often- ignored category of Tintoretto’s output, namely his altarpieces.

    The Young Friends of Save Venice, Boston Chapter, sponsored the restoration of the first painting, the Birth of Saint John the Baptistin the Church of San Zaccaria, in 2001. An anonymous donation in honor of the present writer enabled the conservation of the second picture, the Baptism of Christin the rarely visited Church of San Silvestro, in the winter of 2003-2004.

    Before cleaning, specialists had considered neither picture a major work by Tintoretto, and speculated that the extent of workshop intervention was considerable. In both pictures a yellowed layer of varnish and clumsy repaints discouraged a fresh assessment of their quality. Now, freed from encrustations of grime, darkened varnish, and old restorations, these two altarpieces appear transformed and can take their rightful place as important works by Tintoretto.

    The Birth of Saint John the Baptistwas treated in autumn 2001 by the Capovilla Pruneri firm under the direction of the late Sandro Sponza of Venice’s Superintendency of Fine Arts. When the painting, measuring 270.5 x 204.2 cm, was removed from its frame, it was found to be in reasonable condition overall. Although there was no record of past restorations in the files of the Superintendency, the stretcher’s construction indicates that the picture was probably restored soon after World War II. The existing stretcher was structurally sound, but it was infested with insects and needed treatment to prevent future harm. The canvas had been relined, and its edges had been reinforced with extra strips of canvas, which constituted a double lining of the boarders. The paint layer itself, abraded in the past, had suffered greater damage. Darkened varnish and discolored repaints from earlier restorations had made the entire picture seem too golden in tonality, and had marred the legibility of many details.

    Following a preliminary cleaning of dust, conservators used solvents to remove delicately the thick layer of varnish and the extensive areas of old repaints. This cleaning brought to light jewel-like tones – rich maroons, blues, greens, and purples that Tintoretto occasionally employed – that had been shrouded.

    The cleaning also made clear such fundamental elements of the composition as the folds of the draperies, the checkered paving of the room, and the door or window in the center background against which a serving woman’s face is silhouetted. Other objects became decipherable as well, such as the broom used by the woman at the right edge of the canvas, the small loaf of bread on the tablecloth in the left background (presumably a reference to the Eucharist), and the large rectangular form held by the woman at the far left. This last object seems to be a wooden screen that had been used to shield the mother while she gave birth.

    Many pentimenti– visible evidence of corrections made during the painting’s execution and now apparent as pigments age unevenly – were found underneath the old restorations. Most of these pentimenti, typical of Venetian practice, are simply changes in the contours of the figures. The most surprising discovery, however, was a cat, curled up in the right foreground, below the woman sweeping the floor. Analysis of the paint layers made clear that for some unknown reason Tintoretto painted the cat and then changed his mind, and covered it. Tintoretto had not intended the cat to be visible, and its ghostly outline would have been a distraction. Thus the cat was hidden again after being documented by photography. Losses in the paint layer were filled with a wax resin and then inpainted “a trateggio,” employing tiny parallel lines to cover the areas of missing paint. As always, these restorations are intended to be easily recognizable at close range and reversible.

    As a result of this treatment, the Birth of Saint John the Baptistnow appears as a marvelous and glowing work, substantially executed by the master himself. The composition consists of two pyramids: one earthly of young women tending the newborn, and one heavenly, consisting of athletic angels, cherubim, and the dove of the Holy Spirit, all bathed in divine light. Although the style seems consistent with Tintoretto’s work in the early 1560s, the revealed colors should provoke more discussion about the date of the picture. Indeed, although prominently displayed on the central altar of the Chapel of Sant’Atanasio in the Church of San Zaccaria, the Birth of Saint John the Baptisthas yet to receive proper scholarly attention. Many basic questions, such as the circumstances of its original commission and even its correct title, remain unanswered.

    According to Francesco Sansovino’s 1581 guidebook to Venice, the Birth of Saint John the Baptist was originally placed behind the nuns’ choir in the old church of San Zaccaria. The altarpiece is now in a gilt wood frame set within a stone frame that seems to date from the reconstruction of the chapel in 1595, and thus physical evidence of the original installation has been lost. Moreover, documentation of the original commission, which would provide information about the painting’s patron and date, has never been found.

    The subject of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist, specified by Sansovino and other early sources, makes sense given the picture’s placement in an institution dedicated to Zacharias, the father of John. The old man with the halo at the right edge of the altarpiece is logically Saint Zacharias himself, whose relics belonged to the nunnery. Additional support for this identification comes from the similarity to an earlier, horizontal-format picture by Tintoretto in the Hermitage, which features a mirror-image version of the central group of three women and the baby. Because the woman holding the child in that painting has a halo, she is clearly Mary helping her cousin Elizabeth who has just given birth. The woman holding the child in the San Zaccaria altarpiece does not possess a halo, but her facial features and the colors of her clothing correspond to the standard type of the Virgin.

    On the other hand, certain aspects of the iconography, particularly the presence of the angels and the dove, suggest that the painting may instead depict the story of the Birth of the Virgin Mary, a much more common subject in Renaissance painting. Both Mary and John were born miraculously to aged parents – Anne and Joachim, and Zacharias and Elizabeth – so the iconographies of these subjects are nearly interchangeable. Certainly Tintoretto seems to have derived something of the interior setting, the general composition, and the arriving angel from Albrecht Dürer’s early-sixteenth-century woodcut of the Birth of the Virgin Mary (Bartsch 80). While Tintoretto’s use of northern prints awaits full investigation, the existence of this visual source offers evidence that the newborn in this painting was Mary.

    Throughout his career, Tintoretto often depicted subjects to emphasize multiple levels of meaning. For example, his famous picture of the Removal of the Body of Saint Mark, painted for the Scuola Grande di San Marco and now in the Accademia, shows the devoted servants of Mark the Evangelist rescuing his body from a funeral pyre. The main figures carrying the corpse of Mark resemble the typical group carrying the dead Christ in an Entombment image. Moreover, the setting of Tintoretto’s painting describes not the city of Alexandria, but Venice’s Piazza San Marco. Clearly Tintoretto intended his paintings to inspire additional ideas in the minds of his viewers. An observer who conflated Mark and Christ, Alexandria and Venice, would have understood the unique status of Venice’s patron saint. The fact that a painting can have only one title does not mean it must represent only one subject.

    In this light, I believe that while the nuns of San Zaccaria thought they were getting an image of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist, Tintoretto wished to underscore just how special this saint was by painting a somewhat ambiguous treatment of the narrative. John the Baptist was considered the Herald of Christ, the link between the Old Testament and the New; he was in fact Jesus’ cousin. Thus any compositional and iconographic similarities between this topic and the more common subject of the Birth of the Virgin were intentional and to be celebrated for the deeper meanings they inspired.

    The second Tintoretto altarpiece, the Baptism of Christin the Church of San Silvestro, is much simpler in composition and straightforward in subject matter. Located in an overlooked church near the Rialto markets, this picture has been considered a late work by Tintoretto, executed c. 1580, about the same time as his last paintings along the walls in the Sala Superiore of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

                Analogous to the situation in San Zaccaria, this picture also is not on its original altar; in this case the church was rebuilt between 1837 and 1843 and all earlier traces were lost. The little scholarly attention accorded to this painting derives from the existence of two preparatory drawings fro the composition that are housed in the Uffizi. One sheet (no. 12943F) shows how Tintoretto used charcoal to sketch quickly the bold contours of the figure of John. Typical of most Renaissance preparatory drawings, the artist used a nude model and later “clothed” the figure in the final painting. This drawing shows how Tintoretto first drew the left arm of John tightly bent at the elbow, and only later realized that elongating the arm would offer a more graceful sweep to the body. The squared grid may have been used to transfer the figure to another drawing or to the canvas, or indeed may be a check on proportions; notice how John is exactly seven heads high.

                Measuring 284.5 x 172.5 cm, the Baptism of Christhad not been restored since 1937, and had suffered from more than scholarly neglect. Indeed, during initial examination by the conservator Gino Marin under the guidance of Gabriella Delfini of the Superintendency of Fine Arts of Venice, it became clear that the altarpiece was threatened by more than the usual insect infestation of the wooden stretcher. Indeed, the painting was endangered by the lining canvas that had been attached to the back of the original canvas during a previous restoration.  Three unequal pieces of cloth (doubtless employed to save money) constituted this lining, and the vertical seams of this backing has already begun to press through the paint surface. With time, this pressure would have caused the paint surface to buckle along these lines of stress; therefore this lining was removed and replaced, and the infested stretcher was treated for insects.

                Old additions to the edges of the canvas (principally along the left side and in the upper corners) were replaced by canvas sections nearly identical in weave to the herringbone of the original canvas. The careful removal of darkened varnish and previous restorations revived a luminosity in the paint surface that ahd been obscured for decades, if not centuries. Furthermore, the cleaning revealed numerous pentimenti, particularly in the contours of Christ’s head and left hand, testimony to Tintoretto’s preference for finalizing details at the last moment.

                Especially striking was the uncovering of three heads of cherubs in the upper left of the painting, above the dove of the Holy Spirit; these had been covered by an earlier restoration. The heavy brushstrokes depicting the angels suggested this was an eighteenth-century repainting of an original motif. It was decided to retain the eighteenth-century angels because they represent a document of the physical changes to the picture and also because their removal might have damaged the traces of earlier angels that remained below. The inpainting of passages such as the right hand of Christ and the left hand of the Baptist was greatly aided by the discovery of a drawing after the painting, perhaps by a follower of Tintoretto, generously shared by Professor Paola Rossi.

                Thanks to the philanthropy of the anonymous donors and the exacting efforts of Gino Marin, a neglected painting can now be recognized as one of the most poetic works in Tintoretto’s entire oeuvre. Following the cleaning, the crucial element of water is now legible and prominent, now rippling over the bottom of the composition and flowing from John’s dish. Viewers can appreciate again the ingenious contrasts in lighting – Christ’s body lit while John’s remains mostly in darkness, or Christ’s head illuminated and John’s silhouetted in shadow, or Christ’s left thigh lit brightly as opposed to John’s right – that Tintoretto used to strengthen the physical connection between the primary figures.

                Indeed, while Tintoretto felicitously used a landscape that recalls the Venetian lagoon, the focus is on the figures.  Their arrangement is a striking departure from most depictions of the Baptism where the men stand side by side. By placing John above Christ (which the preparatory drawing proves Tintoretto had intended from the start), the gesture of pouring water on the head of a standing figure is elegant and comfortable, rather than strained. In this painting’s clarity and subtlety, the always-competitive Tintoretto has emulated his greatest rivals. The arms of both Christ and John employ the rhetorically eloquent gestures of Veronese. The hushed and reverential mood and the caressing brushstrokes resemble the late work of Titian. The combination of muscular protagonists and humble piety, however, is Tintoretto’s alone.

                Finally, the altarpiece format itself seems to show Tintoretto challenging himself in a category in which both Titian and especially Veronese excelled. The number of outstanding altarpieces punctuating Veronese’s career indicate that he thrived with the vertical formats and liturgical restrictions of altarpieces, as seen in the altarpiece for the Giustiani family in San Francesco dell Vigna of c. 1551, or the late Saint Jeromefor Sant’Andrea della Zirada, both conserved by Save Venice. By contrast, Tintoretto seems more comfortable with the horizontal laterali that line the walls of Venetian churches andscuole. Tintoretto must have relished the narrative possibilities afforded by horizontal canvases, as they constitute his greatest works.

                At times Tintoretto seemed to relinquish the altarpiece format to Veronese. When Tintoretto did paint an altarpiece he often relegated the execution to his assistants, offering little supervision, and the results could be pedestrian, For example, the only weak painting in the entire San Rocco cycle is the altarpiece in the Sala Superiore. Nonetheless, as is once again apparent in the distinguished altarpieces of the Birth of Saint John the Baptistand the Baptism of Christ, Tintoretto was able to prove to his rivals, and to posterity, that he could beat other Venetian artists at their own game.

               

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    • 2004 The Conservation of San Sebastiano

    Amalia Donatella Basso

    Excerpted from Studies in Venetian Art and Conservation, 2004

     

    Problems regarding the state of conservation of San Sebastian and Paolo Veronese’s pictorial decorations have been documented at least since the nineteenth century, when serious efforts were undertaken to remedy the grave deterioration of both the structure and the paintings.  These documents include an extensive correspondence among officials of the church, the state, territorial and religious institutions, and the Accademia di Belle Arti, which at the time was directly responsible for the protection and conservation of works of art, as well as descriptions from interested restorers and painters.  Important testimony is also offered by the publications and manuscript notes of Emanuele Antonio Cicogna, as well as from thirty-nine detailed entries in “Objects of art in the church of San Sebastiano” dated April 1898.  Despite the dramatic economic conditions that Venice faced during the nineteenth century, the intent was clearly to find the resources and the funds that the church needed.  It is touching to observe that the costly conservation campaigns were carried out without interruption, despite the lack of interest from the parish priest, and despite great difficulties and limited scientific knowledge.

            Rainwater that infiltrated the roof and the windows was the primary reason for the deterioration of the wooden ceiling and the three great ceiling canvases dedicated to the story of Esther, but the organ was also damaged, as recorded as early as 1821, in addition to the walls and the wall painting.  In the 1830s, in order to preserve the painting of “the great Paolo” from further ruin and to continue to enjoy the superb masterpieces, the academicians Sebastiano Santi and Lattanzio Querena were entrusted with the restoration of the Esther canvases; these, according to a very well-informed Cicogna, had previously been relined.   In 1834, at the expense of the Austrians governing Venice (Imperio Regio Governo), Querena restored Saint Sebastian exhorting Saints Marcus and Marcellianwhile Santi restored the Martyrdom of San Sebastian, the canvases in the presbytery. Shortly before, Veronese’s Coronation of the Virginin the sacristy and the high altarpiece had been restored, as well as Titian’s Saint Nicholasin the narthex.

             From the 1820s on, the need for maintenance on the architectural structure of San Sebastiano, the roof, rain gutters, and windows, became pressing, and the requests for intervention insistent, and even more so during the 1860s and the time of Venice’s passage from Austrian control to the newly-united Italian state. The documentation is conspicuous between the ministerial agencies and the Academy of Fine Arts, which was called upon to objectively analyze the general situation of the church and determine the cause of its deterioration, and then to suggest appropriate methods for the safeguarding of the masterpieces in the church.  With a particularly modern sensibility and with great care, detailed reports described the conservation conditions of the paintings. The reports determined which painting were to be “renewed,” which to be restored, and which to even “repaint.”  “Experiments” were carried out, and “trials” to ascertain “what the paintings suffered from.”  The aim was to understand the actual nature of the deterioration, its physical causes, and not merely to make aesthetic corrections.  Only following careful studies could the best intervention be planned.  This same approach is valid today, and similar procedures were followed in Save Venice’s pre-restoration studies, made easier this time by more modern advances in science.  Nonetheless, despite scientific limitations, nineteenth-century knowledge of the subject came from highly skilled artisans. The walls of the church were described as covered with grime; the rainwater that seeped from the roof and the windows is observed, and the subsequent damage duly recorded.  During the harsh winters of that century, particularly in 1831 and in December 1878 and the following January, there was actually snow inside the church, snow that then melted, provoking grave consequences.

             The examination of the Veronese’s paintings in San Sebastiano, beginning in the late 1860s and early 1870s, yielded not only material information regarding the works, but new discussion regarding alternative philosophies of conservation.  Various methods of intervention were proposed in light of the condition of deteriorating painted surfaces, the nature and gravity of the losses, and the possibility of pictorial integration.  Conservation was to take place without applying oils and varnishes to the frescoed surfaces.  If the painted plaster was flaking or damaged, the suggestion was to reattach the loose pieces with copper nails.

             The Academy of Fine Arts was asked to indicate candidates for the job.  One aspiring heavy-handed “restorer”, who apparently did not get the position, was the Vicentine artist Giovanni Busato, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna.  Busato practiced the now-controversial stereochrome technique, also known as the water-glass method, which used fixatives and diluted color substances like potassium silicate or sodium to create an appearance similar to fresco, but with an impermeable and flame resistant surface.  Busato’s proposal, evidently, would have involved the complete repainting of sections of Veronese’s frescoes.

             In January 1872, however, Guglielmo Botti was assigned the restoration project, of San Sebastiano, assisted by his young student, Carlo Spoldi.  Botti was an inspector from the Venetian Academy who also practiced the stereochrome technique on mural painting.   During his lifetime he was described as a “a great fixer of frescoes that face ruin and a discreet restorer of oil paintings.”  His restoration of Giovanni Bellini’s Saint Peter Martyr painting on Murano was judged as “clumsy” and “detrimental” by a fine arts commission in 1879. Botti intervened on the frescoes of Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua and on those by Pordenone in the cloister of Santo Stefano in Venice. He is known to have used the experimental “Pettenkofer” process named after a Bavarian chemist that developed a restoration technique in 1863 using alcohol vapor and the application of copal resins  (derived from the tropical copaiba tree) to “regenerate” blanched varnish and paint layers.  Botti is known to have used the copal resins when he restored Titian’s Madonna with Saints Roch and Sebastian, Cosmas and Damianin the church of Santa Maria della Salute.

             The exact nature and results of Botti’s intervention in San Sebastiano are unclear. In 1874 the three Esther canvases were returned to the ceiling of the church from storage in Palazzo Ducale, where they had been for ten years, along with the organ shutters and the three paintings from the presbytery.  From that period, very important graphic documentation, surveys, and drawings still exist.  Following the return of the paintings to the church, an entirely new means of documentation will be employed to record the structure and its interior condition: photography.

             Despite the restoration initiatives of the 1870s, the conservation problems remained unsolved, and the same forms of decay continued to appear.  Several restoration campaigns took place in the next century, in particular in 1936, and again in the 1960s when Leonetto Tintori restored many of the paintings. In the early1990s the conservator Ottorino Nonfarmale intervened as well. 

             Today, some of the painted plaster is detaching in upper zones of the church, in areas where nails and brass and copper tacks had been applied in the past. Lesions from past structural problems had been repaired with mortar and plaster that were not integrated with the surrounding painted surface, with the imaginable consequences regarding the legibility of the pictorial scene. Worse damage comes from dripping rain water through the window frames, causing extensive decohesion of the painted surface in the areas around the windows.  The once brilliant cycle of Veronese frescoes now looks dull due to salt deposits on the surface, “ because the lagoon air is not good for frescoes,” as stated in the extensive nineteenth-century report on the church.

             In the early 1860s the wooden ceiling was in very bad condition and the painted and gilded sections were restored, although most of the procedures were not documented. Now the condition is worrisome not only for the overall appearance but because of flaking on the painted surface.  Large sections are gravely discolored, impoverished by paint losses and altered colors.  The gilding has turned brown, and what little remains of it is flaking and at risk.

             The overall restoration of the church of San Sebastiano is important from an artistic and historical viewpoint, but vexed by a history of difficulties, which requires, more than other projects, preliminary analysis and precise observations, archival research, evaluations, and surveys that are essential for a better understanding of what the eventual restoration campaign will entail.  The church’s decoration, created with extraordinary technique by the great master, is composed of a combination of materials, each with different chemical and physical properties and behavioral dynamics, further modified by consequent conservation campaigns. 

             The presence of white spots on the surface of the ceiling was the reason the Save Venice research campaign began. These marks proved to be less drastic than feared and are not caused by extensive water damage, as had been feared. Instead, chemical analysis revealed that they are derived from the crystallizing of the copal resin in the surface varnish used in the Pettenkofer restoration method in the nineteenth century.   Consequently, in light of the results, we can formulate a restoration program based on facts that have been further established by test cleaning that conservators tried on small areas of the ceiling.  Observations regarding the painting techniques used, some of them rather unusual, have provided indispensable information.  An extraordinary overview has been created through the comparison of data and its interpretation, and the study of historical and archival surveys. The possibility to compare the actual state of conservation with the original state has led to a better understanding of the overall context, and will make conservation efforts easier from now on.

             Two distinct technical procedures are evident on the walls.  The upper walls are prevalently in fresco, that is, on the wet plaster; the lower walls are instead wall paintings in oil and tempera painted on the dried plaster.  The supporting plaster throughout the church is identical, a compact surface made up of lime and silicic sand, a few millimeters thick, extended over the arriccio, a layer of coarse plaster of the same components applied to the wall before the smoother top layer of plaster, the intonaco,that forms the painting surface. The frescoes show signs of incisions made in the wet plaster that indicate the transfer of cartoon drawings for both the figures and the ornamental parts. The architecture that surrounds the narrative episodes was also first defined by incisions.

             In the absence of archival information, important information has been learned from the analysis of the materials and procedures used in the course of previous restoration.  Following are observations pertaining to the wooden ceiling, gravely compromised and considered the top priority in Save Venice’s upcoming restoration campaign.

             Analytical methods were used to identify and study the inorganic elements in paint samples by studying cross-sections under an optic microscope in reflected and ultraviolet light.  Observations were made using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) along with energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDS) through the backscattering of electrons, used to identify the elemental composition.  On the most significant samples, observation with an optic microscope was followed by analysis of gas-chromatography (GC) to identify the binders and fixatives.  To complete this analysis, Fourier transfer infrared spectography (FTIR) was used to determine the functional group of the organic and inorganic substance, including altered products and treatments.

             Numerous paint samples were taken from various areas of the painted decoration of the wooden ceiling and the Esther canvases. The analysis involved the frames, the painted panels, and the areas decorated with figures and floral motives.  Vast areas of the ceiling have been heavily repainted or suffer from white spotting caused by the deterioration of the copal resins used in the surface varnish.

             Three techniques were used on the wooden ceiling. The Cardinal Virtues in the roundels at the corners and the decorations of Flowers and Fruit in the oblong spaces are painted on canvas glued to a wooden panel with a gesso preparation.  For the eight figures of Angels near the Triumph of Mordechaiand the Coronation of Esther, the paint is applied directly on the wooden support without a gesso preparation. The hand of the great painter is evident in the many solutions adopted to create decorations with methods more in tune with wall painting than with decoration on wood.  For example, the profiles of the eight angels in the corners of the three Esther canvas are incised on the wooden panel with a metal point, a technique used in frescoes.Cross-section analysis of the paint samples in non-figurative areas show a preparation of gesso and animal glue typical of painting on wooden panels, followed by a base of a lead white pigment (biacca).  Above that is a subtle level of organic material that almost always is followed by repainting made up ochre and terre mixed with lithopone, a white pigment made of barium sulfate and zinc sulfide.  Because lithopone came into use in the 1800s, it is evident that the areas painted with it are covering lost paint.  The study of organic components has revealed the use of oil in the pictorial areas. The presence of polyvinyl acetate, a rubbery synthetic resin used in paints or adhesives, provided a clue to recent conservation work. Calcium oxalate is ever-present, sometimes accompanied by sulfate and chlorides. Also identified in some areas, and above all on the straight frames, is casein, a substance derived from milk and used as a water-soluble medium that resembles oil paint. 

             The most substantial results came from the analysis of the gray figures and the yellowish backgrounds. In both cases, the cross-section sequences of the pigment samples indicate a layer of blue smalt, a cobalt pigment derived from ground glass. The smalt was also clearly identified by the scanning electron microscope (SEM). The original smalt is now totally absent of its blue hue, while on the surface one sees traces of repainting in yellow ochre and lead white biacca.  The question tied to the use of blue smalt on the ceiling is noteworthy.  The nature of this glass pigment makes it ideal for painting using a medium mixed with water, while it is inappropriate with an organic binder such as oil.  In the second case, the color eventually changes, becoming grey and transparent.  Thus, the smalt traces present in the areas under the yellowish overpaint were originally vivid blue. The figures appear gray because the blue smalt was covered by lead white biacca.

     

             The full chromatic splendor of the ceiling as it was originally conceived has been totally lost, due to the chemical alteration of the oil-based binder mixed with smalt and the consequential color change caused by the questionable use of the blue pigment. Oil-based binders are indispensable for painting on wood, and therefore, in the case of the painted wooden ceiling, it would have been better to use the more expensive azurite or lapis lazuli rather than blue smalt.

              At some point, to remedy the overall unpleasant aesthetic effect with colors that were sad and faded, the discolored areas were repainted in yellow, a tone selected for unknown reasons. This nineteenth-century repainting, although contradictory, did allow anyone looking up to have a uniform vision of the ceiling and provided a dignified context for the three large ceiling canvases.

             Now that we have identified Paolo Veronese’s techniques in the pictorial cycle of San Sebastiano with technical and scientific analyses, a rich databank of information has been compiled on the stylistic evolution and experimental nature of the creative process of the great master, which can be compared to data from other contexts.  The successive phases of execution of the wall paintings and the materials used is alone significant, expressing Veronese’s desire to achieve a three-dimensional result of great artist effect, and the capacity to expertly handle not only materials and techniques with amazing results, but even the architectural space, anticipating the art of the Baroque.

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    • The Poetics of the Line: Giambattista Tiepolo’s Calligraphy Beyond Representation

    Johanna Fassl

    Excerpted from Studies in Venetian Art and Conservation, 2004

     

    The recent conservation of the Tiepolo drawings from the Gatteri Album in the Museo Correr in Venice presents an excellent opportunity to study anew the penmanship of Giambattista (1696-1770) and his son Domenico (1727-1804). The drawings are in red chalk on blue paper and belong to a body of work that has been subject to decades of debate regarding authorship.

                Both Giambattista and Domenico turned to the chalk medium during the creative process, and often it is difficult to distinguish the hand of the father from the son. The recurring question is whether the drawings associated with the painted work of Giambattista are preparatory studies by the master himself, or ricordi, copies by Domenico after his father’s finished paintings. Systematic comparisons between drawn and painted oeuvre did not afford decisive conclusions. By focusing on the representational content, we have also missed the pleasure to simply enjoy the calligraphy of these sheets. Therefore, in the following paragraphs I intend to recall our attention to the essence of these drawings, that is the drawn line and hand that created it.

                That the handwriting of a draftsman, his ductus, is his most immediate signature, is told in a famous story from antiquity. In book thirty-five of his Natural History, Pliny the Elder describes the painter Apelles visiting Protogenes of Rhodes. The latter was not at home, and when his maid asked whom she might report, Apelles responded: “Here it is,” grabbing a brush and drawing a line of extreme delicacy across a large panel placed on an easel. Upon his return, Protogenes saw the utter precision of the line and at once declared that his visitor had been Apelles, for no one else could have drawn anything this perfect. In another color, Protogenes drew a second and even finer line upon the first and went away. When Apelles called again he was ashamed to have been beaten and drew a third line of yet another color over the first two, cutting them down their length and leaving no room for any further refinement. Protogenes found himself defeated and went at once to look for Apelles. Both draftsmen agreed to leave the painting just as it was to posterity, as a study object for artists. Pliny adds that it was a marvel, “its wide surface disclosing nothing save lines which eluded sight, and among the numerous works by excellent painters it was like a blank, and it was precisely this that lent it surpassing attraction and renown.”

                With a single stroke of his brush, a mark that was without narrative charge or descriptive responsibility, Apelles disclosed his identity. The drawn line of Apelles, who was the court painter of the Emperor Alexander the Great, was self-indicative and revealed more about his personality than could any finished picture. The drawn line essentially stands as a permanent record of a specific hand movement and thus graphically declares the presence of a particular persona. In its purest form it makes up the work and at the same time identifies its creator.

                Giambattista Tiepolo certainly was aware of the line of Apelles, for it was one of the most widely interpreted anecdotes from the Renaissance onwards. But the eighteenth-century master may also have considered himself a direct heir to the most celebrated painter from ancient Greece. In his early career, he depicted himself twice in the role of Apelles, both times as the court painter portraying the Emperor’s favorite concubine, Campaspe (Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal and unknown location). His wife, Cecilia Guardi, sat as a model, a fitting choice, as Apelles fell in love with Campaspe, and she was given to him as a present in appreciation of his bravura.

                If an artist shall be known by his line, how do we recognize Giambattista Tiepolo? His penmanship essentially is not unlike that of Apelles. We are aware of about three thousand Tiepolo drawings in two distinct media: pen and wash on white paper, and black or red chalk, heightened with white chalk, nearly always on blue paper. In either category, Giambattista’s eminence, his precise and virtuoso ability, is immediately recognizable. His line work compares to the scores of Mozart in that it is marked by an utter security; as in his painted works, there are very few corrections in the form of pentimenti. There is an active intelligence at work in which every stroke counts. The line itself is that of an athletic draftsman, well trained through continuous exercise.

                In its security, Giambattista’s line also suggests more than it depicts. It is not generated by immediate study of nature and does not describe the particularities of individual forms. What we see on paper is not the outcome of a meticulous visual study driven by the desire to accurately represent an object. Rather, it is the record of an acquired knowledge that was gained through observation. The lines freely interpret an object, describing just one possible solution to a problem, and thus are liberated from the constraints of exact counterfeit.

                In his red chalk drawings on blue paper, Giambattista made no original technical contribution to the history of drawing; neither format nor paper nor pigment is new. Blue paper was first made in Venice around 1500 and was famous north of the Alps as “Venezianer papier” (paper of the Venetians). Its surface is soft, and its hue provides a suitable middle ground for a coloristic approach to drawing. The same is true for the red chalk, the sanguina, whose initial use is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci in the late fifteenth century. The impression of the orange-red chalk, made from clay colored by hematite, the chief ore of iron, is overwhelmingly positive. It lies at the very center of the “hot” side of the color circle and is the hue that symbolizes the highest pitch of feeling. Combined with the “cool” blue of the paper and the heightening in white chalk, the effect is one of contrast, that of an active force at work.

                Giambattista may not have invented a new technique of drawing, but his ability to invigorate and perfect existing media is so essential a part of his accomplishment that it deserves special attention. The rapidity of athletic motion, the finesse of contour line, and the audacity to leave large sections of the sheet entirely unmarked fully explore the possibilities of contrast that the medium offers.

                The drawing Studies of a Right and a Left Leghas been recognized in conjunction with a river god on the ceiling of the Würzburg Kaisersaal, the imperial hall of the residence in which Giambattista worked between 1750 and 1753, frescoing also the grand staircase. Disregarding the comparison between fresco and drawing, we are able to fully appreciate both the eloquence and delicacy of Giambattista’s calligraphy. Being right-handed, he must have begun the drawing on the upper left side, at the top of the right leg’s kneecap. In typical fashion, Giambattista initiated his line by setting the chalk ever so slightly onto the paper, just for an instant, before pressing harder in order to establish a firm beginning of the line – the thickening and bolding of the line indicate where his hand became heavier.

                It appears that Giambattista, once or twice, briefly lifted his hand off the paper, rapidly drawing the contour of the right shin. He then proceeded to the calf, again with great athleticism, little pause, and without ever retouching or correcting any parts of the line. The same is true for the foot, depicted in a di sotto in su view (from underneath looking upward) that is characteristic for a ceiling study.

                The left leg confirms Giambattista’s approach to drawing. We find the same refined and fluid penmanship that articulates form through a sequence of single and confident lines. The contours of the calf may appear as pentimenti, but rather than correcting his line, Giambattista went over the same passage twice in order to create a firmer base of the form. Particularly fine lines barely indicate the shin. It sufficed for the draftsman to establish a firm base in the contour of the calf: we have a precise reference point and thus can imagine the rest for ourselves.

                The minimal shading also stimulates our imagination. Both the sparely applied parallel hatching and white heightening hardly serve to describe actual flesh and muscle. The paper between the lines is virtually left empty and it is up to our knowledge of anatomy to fill in the blanks. The impression of inconclusiveness is reinforced by the fact that there are no contour lines bounding the undersides of both the right thigh and the right foot: forms spills out into blank paper, and figure and ground fuse to become one expansive space. The absence of modeling and decisive boundary invests Giambattista’s forms with a quality of spaciousness and infinity. Drawing with “a lot of paper,” Tiepolo’s spare and transparent line work gives precedence to the unmarked surface; he expands rather than confines form. This is why his figures are at home on large ceilings; they already carry a quality of vastness within them.

                Studies of a Right and Left Legwas an important drawing in the Tiepolo studio. It was copied twice; the sheets are bound in another sketchbook in Würzburg. In fact, the original drawing bears the mark of a stylus with which Giambattista’s “Apellean” line was traced over. By copying his drawings, the garzoni, apprentices in the studio, were trained in the master’s style. Due to this practice it is difficult at times to tell Giambattista’s hand from the one of his most gifted pupil, his son Domenico.

                Turning to the Study of a Left Leg and Scribbles, however, it is immediately clear that it is a drawing by Domenico. The leg is drawn over a series of pen scrawls that have no representational content. It is a fine study, but the type of line that describes the leg is dramatically different from the delicacy and confidence of Giambattista’s ductus. A series of contour lines deliberately encloses the form. They are bolder and less varied than the father’s single line, for Domenico’s hand is heavier, consistently pressing hard. The lines are also more tentative. With a kind of skepticism – he almost mistrusts his own hand – Domenico searches, probes, and gropes for the correct form. The heavy shading, filling the entire space between the contours, contributes to this sense of indecision. The marks are varied, ranging from parallel hatching to zig-zag lines in various directions, and they investigate rather than affirm.

                At times, Domenico’s line is tremulous, as in the case of the short, “crackling” strokes that describe the top of the foot and the toes. Here his hand is lighter, and in contrast to the overarticulation of the leg, there is great charm in these flickering strokes. The Study of a Left Leg and Scribblesdates to a period when Domenico was firmly embedded in the studio of his father, bound by a certain hallmark style that he was eager, if not constrained, to imitate. He searches to copy the fluent and continuous line of Giambattista, going over the same outline again and again. But his forte was not the single, subtle, eloquent line, but the nervous and tremulous one. As Domenico ages, and particularly after the death of his father in 1770, the tremulousness that marks the foot in the Study of a Left Legbecomes characteristic of his style. He abandons the chalk medium in favor of the pen, and in the drawings after 1780 the tremulous pen line communicates a lightness of touch and sense of liberty in its own right.

                We know little about the personal lives of these two draftsmen, but from their ductuswe can infer that their temperaments must have been very different. Giambattista’s line is confident and poetic, suggesting more than it depicts, whereas Domenico’s line is tentative and prosaic, firmly circumscribing its form.

                A final word should be said about the inconclusive forms in Giambattista’s drawings. The majority of the sheets were kept in the Tiepolo studio; they constituted the most important working material and patrimony of the bottega. But in the eighteenth-century, drawings were also collector’s items, sought and acquired by connoisseurs for their cabinets. Roger de Piles was one of them who also articulated a set of values that have influenced connoisseurs to the present day. Drawings mark “the character” of the artist, he stated, revealing the nature of his genius, whether it is “quick or heavy,” whether “his thoughts are noble or common,” whether he has skill and “good taste.” He praised the “dessins touchez & peu finis,” the drawings that are sketchy and unfinished, over the fully accomplished ones because “they direct the ideas of their viewer to the right path: the reason for that is that the imagination substitutes all the missing or unfinished parts, and everybody does that according to his own taste.”

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    • Save Venice’s Conservation of Tiepolo Drawings in the Correr Museum

    Attilia Dorigato

    Curator, Correr Museum

    Excerpted from Studies in Venetian Art and Conservation, 2004

     

    In 2002, at the suggestion of art historian W.R. Rearick, a Save Venice board member and a great friend of Musei Civici, Save Venice gave funding to begin the delicate restoration of a group of drawings by Giambattista (1696-1770) and Domenico (1727-1804) Tiepolo. The drawings are part of the Correr Museum’s rich collection of Tiepolo drawings and are well known by scholars.

                The drawings came to the Correr in 1884 as a bequest of the Triestine painter Giuseppe Lorenzo Gatteri (1830-1884), whose wishes were made known to Nicolò Barozzi, then director of the Correr Museum, by the artist’s brother-in-law, Giuseppe Webes.

                There are 312 Tiepolo sheets, many of which have drawings on both rectoand verso. The drawings can be divided into two groups: the first group of 87 large sheets of gray paper measuring approximately eighteen inches by eleven and a half each, and a second group of 225 sheets of blue paper, in irregular forms and in diverse dimensions. The drawings are made in red and black chalk, often heightened with white chalk.

                The drawings, originally mounted in a single album, were separated from their binding in 1909 when they were displayed at the Fondaco dei Turchi, the seat of the Correr Museum at that time. They were removed because, according to the Illustrated Guide to the Correr Museumprinted in Venice in 1909, “the drawings in red pencil and some in black pencil often covered both sides of the paper… and were displayed in mobile cases so that both sides of the paper could be seen.”           

                A good number of the sheets were displayed at Ca’Rezzonico Museum in 1936. In 1946, Giulio Lorenzetti’s book Il Quaderno dei Tiepolo al Museo Correr di Venezia (The Correr Tiepolo Album at the Correr Museum in Venice)created a facsimile of the Gatteri album with a convincing reconstruction of the album on similar gray paper. Lorenzetti even reproduced the chalk smudges left by the drawings on the backs of the preceding sheets.

                Many scholars have been interested in the Correr album, starting with Giorgio Vigni in his Note sull’attività del Tiepolo a Madrid ed a Würzburg nel Quaderno Correr (Notes on Tiepolo’s activities in Madrid and Würzburg in the Correr Album), followed by J. Byam Shaw’s Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, London 1962, and Terisio Pignatti’s Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings in the Correr Museum of Venice, London 1965, and ending with George Knox’s Tiepolo, Tecnica e Immaginazione, Venezia 1979; Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo: A Study and a Catalogue Raisonnè of the Chalk Drawings, Oxford 1980. Knox examined the Correr sheets and tried to determine which drawings were done by the father and which by the son, based not only on the specific reference to a painting by one or the other, but also on stylistic characteristics.

                The Correr drawings are evidence of the intense activity of the Tiepolo family “business,” as they refer to works dating from 1748 to 1781. The drawings were not “first ideas” for future works because, in that case, the drawings would have been made on white paper with pen or wash. These drawings instead are chalk studies of details for paintings and frescoes, among which occasionally a full figure appears. The details are often repeated, on different sheets, because the artists wished to do in-depth studies of the image in light or in shade or in perspective to define the likeness just as it would appear in the painting.

                The symbiotic relationship that the father, son and workshop had does not always allow one to distinguish the exact authorship of each sheet when there are no specific references to works of certain attribution. It was not unusual for Domenico to refer to his father’s inventions and to insert them into his own compositions. When there is no specific evidence, the distinction between the two hands is often based exclusively on characteristic style, which leaves ample margin for interpretation, considering the organization of the Tiepolo family atelier.

                The circumstances of the Tiepolo drawings, from their arrival at the Correr Museum to the dismantling of the album, followed by the inadequate conservation and display conditions, led to the urgent need for conservation treatment. With support from Save Venice, the Correr Museum sent fifty drawings to Rome for restoration.

                Paper conservator Karmen Corak Rinesi first removed the drawings from their damaging support and eliminated, whenever possible, old glue and tape that had been used to mount them. A careful and light dry cleaning, which removed surface grime, allowed the incisiveness of the drawings to re-emerge. Old and inadequate mends were replaced with handmade Japanese paper. The restorer lightly flattened the sheets to reduce planar distortions. The sheets, which are all loose, were inserted in individual acid-free folders made of permanent paper and buffered cardboard. Folders are the simplest form of protection for drawings on recto and verso. The folders have four flaps of permanent, acid-free paper, which protect all sides of the drawings from dust and other airborne contaminants. A sheet of museum board was placed within each folder to provide some support.

                Save Venice received funding from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to restore the first fifty drawings in the Tiepolo drawing campaign. Restoration is currently underway on a second group of fifty drawings with funding from an anonymous donor to Save Venice.

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    • Saint Jerome and His Order

    Sonia H. Evers

    Excerpted from Studies in Venetian Art and Conservation, 2008

     

    In 1377 The Pisan patrician Pietro Gambacorta abandoned his home, family, and worldly possessions to follow the example of Saint Jerome; in the hills of Montebello near Urbino he founded a monestary in the name of Jerome. In 1393 Gambacorta and several of his followers traveled to Venice where they acquired a house near the parish church of Angelo Raffaele and build an oratory dedicated to Santa Maria piena di grazia e di misericordia, which was expanded into a parish church in the early fifteenth century.  Following the ravages of the plague in 1449, a new church was begun in 1455 with a double dedication to both the Virgin and Saint Sebastian.  Completed in 1468, this was rebuilt, in 1506, with a primary dedication to Sebastian, a saint invoked for protection against the constant threat of the plague.

                Located far from the urban center of Venice in a working class neighborhood near the Fondamenta delle Zattere stands the understated Hieronymite church of San Sebastiano, which by the 1540s had become an important presence in the Venetian ecclesiastical landscape, attracting prominent patrician families to invest in its decoration for salvation insurance as well as for protection from the ever threatening plague. San Sebastiano was hardly the only church dedicated to a plague saint; what then attracted patricians from other parts of the city? Was it the presence of the charismatic, reform-minded abbot, Bernardo Torlioni, described as “one of a new breed of clerics acting as ‘meta-patrons’, coordinators and fundraisers.” Or did the writings of Saint Jerome (Hieronymus) carry particular importance to Venetians in the tumultuous years of the second half of the sixteenth century when corruption abounded within and without monastic walls?

                Jerome, unique among the doctors of the early Church for his knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, was best known for his translation of the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin. This he completed in the Holy Land where he also founded a monastery, convent and hospice for pilgrims near the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Renowned for his piety, scholarship, and eloquence, Jerome extolled the sanctity of chastity, defended the perpetual virginity of Mary, and become the center of an ascetic circle of mostly women. Despite the volume of his literary production, surpassed only by Augustine, his fame slipped into obscurity until the early years of the Renaissance when humanists and clerics alike rediscovered the Church Fathers as part of their agenda to revive the ancient world and reform the contemporary church.

                In the spiritual and political chaos of the fourteenth century, Jerome became a source of solace and inspiration. He became the ideal defender of orthodoxy – the “hammer of heretics” – celebrated for having lived a life consistent with his ideals. Confidence in ecclesiastical authority was at a low ebb and monasteries were losing both members and income. And yet, in the midst of this troubled time, the Hieronymite order rapidly expanded throughout Italy and Spain. Lives of Jerome proliferated alongside spurious documents describing his death and subsequent miracles, claiming that he surpassed all other Church Fathers in holiness. Relics cropped up as did the composition of orations, prayers, and hymns. Dedications of altars, chapels, and churches all encouraged devotion to Jerome throughout Italy. Monastic congregations arose despite the ruling of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 against the founding of new orders.

                Plagues and misconduct took their toll on the church, which increasingly lost spiritual and moral authority. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Hieronymite order had strayed far from the ideals of Jerome.

                In 1537, Pope Paul III appointed Jacopo Sadoleto Cardinal Protector and Gian Pietro Carafa Vice-Protector of the order, both with the mission to cleanse and reform the congregation. Two years later Sadoleto instituted a commission to rewrite the Hieronymite constitution. Two of the most powerful figures of Counter Reformation Italy, Sadoleto and Carafe, were assigned Hieronymite reform. Paul III replaced the vicar general with Fra Bernardo Torlioni who was further instructed to reorganize the order’s rule.  This he accomplished in 1541 when he published the reformed rule that proved so unpopular that the monks lodged a formal complaint at the chapter general in 1542, delaying approval until 1549.  Clearly, discipline was not popular. Meanwhile, Torlioni was passed over for the position of general rector and returned as abbot of San Sebastiano.

                San Sebastiano was in a mess; confidence in the sanctity of the monastery had been lost following and incident in 1538 when several monks refused to obey a calling to Rome. Venetians were outraged and began secretly to post images of monks ensnared by devils on the walls of the monastery. Things worsened until the pope placed San Sebastiano under interdict in 1539; no services could be performed and the bodies of dead parishioners were put on deposit elsewhere.  The lifting of the interdict in 1541 coincided with Torlioni’s completion of the new rule; however, faith in the piety of the monks at San Sebastiano did not recover. Drastic measures were needed to reinstitute order and Torlioni was the man to enact them. Arriving in Venice to find moral decay in a barely functioning church and monastery, and finances adequate for maintenance but not for what he had in mind, Torlioni recognized the necessity for a visual campaign to rehabilitate the order and restore confidence; words along were inadequate to affect the moral transformation he envisioned. This, in 1542, he made a decision that would fundamentally change the appearance of the church. He recalled Scarpagnino, the architect of the 1506 rebuilding, to modify the interior by adding six lateral chapels, three on each side, and to enlarge the monks’ choir above to provide for an increase in the monastic population.  The chapels were crucial to his plan as they could be auctioned off to the highest bidders and thereby finance his grander rhetorical campaign.

                Until 1542 the monastery of San Sebastiano had conformed to the 1444 rule of the Hieronymite constitution.  It was built according to God’s will, without curiosities or extra worldly decorative flourishes—a simple hall church reflective of the austere, devout model of Jerome.  However, when Torlioni invited the 27-year-old Paolo Caliari to begin work, he must have envisioned an end result that would hardly qualify as humble or austere.  And yet, having reformed the constitution himself, he would hardly have planned a visual transformation that might cause offence.  In keeping with Jerome’s love of classical authors, Torlioni looked to Plato and Aristotle to justify the power of imagery. In the TimaeusPlato describes “vision as the cause of the greatest benefit to us, inasmuch as none of the accounts now given concerning the universe would ever have been given if men had not seen the stars or the sun or the heavens…”  While Aristotle in his Metaphysicselevates “above all others the sense of sight.  For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing to everything else.  The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.”

                 Jerome had been shaped by these very intellectual traditions and Veronese, under the guidance of Torlioni, translated Jerome’s Ciceronian eloquence into an epideictic sermon in paint.  Eloquence was put to the end of ecclesiastical reform.  Renaissance humanists had justified eloquence in its ability to embellish the house of the Lord, specifically praising the eloquence of Jerome’s letters for giving the reader a visual image. Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder praised Jerome’s letters as “imbued with such eloquence that [they] give the reader a visual image.”  Torlioni understood the relevance of Jerome in the fight against heresy and used him as his model for the transformation of San Sebastiano into a powerful defense of the Roman Church and the Venetian state.

                Jerome was at the center of spiritual debate in the sixteenth century.  For Erasmus he represented not only the ideal of learned scholarship but also a kind of alter ego as restorer of theology itself.  In contrast, Luther challenged Jerome’s monastic ideals.  Protestants scorned his devotion to the Virgin, his belief in the virtue of celibacy and his pursuit of penitential devotion as contrary to their belief in salvation by faith alone.  To counter Protestant criticisms, the Council of Trent proclaimed the Vulgate, Jerome’s Latin translation, the only authorized Bible and announced the intention to publish all of Jerome’s works and to promote the observance of his feast day on September 30.  Jerome emerged as a crucial voice in the defense of the Catholic Church.

                Erasmus particularly struggled with Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum, in which Jerome proclaimed the supremacy of celibacy over marriage.  The issue of virginity, together with that of the perpetual virginity of Mary, had become highly charged in sixteenth-century Venice where courtesans filled the campiand patrician women began to exert their patronage rights, perhaps in emulation of Jerome’s devout female followers.  The issue of clerical marriage remained open until the final year of the Council of Trent, while the Catholic commitment to chaste celibacy remained a thorn in the side of reform.  The sixteenth century was visited by an almost continual series of widespread disasters that were viewed as God’s punishment for pervasive sin and corruption. Venetians responded with increased piety and decrees by the Senate and Council of Ten against blasphemy, prostitution and sodomy. Moreover, Venice became intimately identified with a variety of chaste and iconographically resonant females, ranging from the Virgin Mary to Justice to Venetia, all of whom were often visually indistinguishable. By the 1580s out of a population of 135,000, some 4,000 had chosen to live in celibacy and some of these virtuous virgins became renowned for their mystical and prophetic powers, claiming for Venice a unique status, as the divinely chosen site of a new Golden Age and Universal Christendom. Jerome’s exaltation of celibacy offered a salve to the ills of contemporary society and his example stood, invisibly yet profoundly, behind the new San Sebastiano – present in each monk who followed in the footsteps of the hermit saint. His authoritative voice called out from the discursive shadows upon Esther, the Virgin, and Sebastian to operate as forceful and effective intercessors.

                Behind this rise of prophetic thinking lay the work of Joachim da Fiore (circa 1135–1202) who saw history as an ascent through three ages: from the Father to the Son to the Spirit.  Before the age of the spirit could begin, the world had to be prepared by a new order of monks.  Torlioni was preparing just that new order at San Sebastiano, as made clear by his selection of the story of Esther for the decorative scheme.  Joachim believed that the story of Esther was prophetic of the third age.  For him Esther represented the union of ecclesia contemplativaand the active Church of Rome, while Mordecai, triumphantover his earthly enemies, stood as predecessor to Peter.

                The story of Esther was rarely represented; its inclusion in both the Sacristy and in the nave of San Sebastiano thus signaled something unusual – the association between Esther and the Virgin Mary as symbolic of the Church and Venice and highlighting the peculiarly Venetian emphasis upon the feminine embodiment of virtue. In addition, Johann Iustus Landsberger, in his Libro Spirituale chiamato Pharetra Divina amorispublished by Paolo Cherardo in Venice in 1548, specifically cited the feast of Ahaseurus as an example of ideal universality and charity.   Its dedication to Daniele Barbaro identifies it with that particular group of learned Venetians who continued to dream of a united Christendom promulgated by Venice as the ideal republic. Torlioni belonged to this group through his close connections with such prominent reform cardinals as Jacopo Sadoleto, Gian Pietro Caraf, and Reginald Pole, all of whom occupied positions of importance in the Hieronymite order.

                The nave ceiling offered Veronese his first opportunity to develop his artistic vision on a grand scale in the service of Christianity and the universal Catholic Church celebrated by the Coronation of Estherin the center and visible immediately upon entering the nave. Esther stands on the brink of her destiny while the Virgin as Queen of Heaven, in the sacristy and in the lost frescoes of the chancel dome, has already fulfilled her role. The placement of Esther in all her potentiality at the center of the nave followed by the crowned Virgin in the sacred space of the presbytery, complements the procession of the devout toward the altar and emphasizes the divine mission of Venice’s specially chosen women who announced the sacredness of Venice.

                Closest to the high altar is the victorious and dynamic image of the Triumph of Mordecai. Joachim viewed Mordecai as the embodiment of triumph and precursor to Saint Peter who, with the establishment of the Catholic Church, vanquished all enemies. The sense of triumph is emphasized by the banned with imperial double-headed eagle, a clear reference to the triumph of the Catholic Church embodied by the Virgin, as Ecclesia, Queen of Heaven.

                In the sacristy and presbytery Veronese, in keeping with Jerome, commemorated the Virgin as the church’s original benefactor by depicting the culminating moments of her life, her coronation and assumption. Originally the chancel cupola contained a fresco, now lost, of the Assumption of the Virgin, which was supported in the pendentives by the Doctors of the Church, Jerome among them. The theme of the Assumption echoed that of the Coronation on the ceiling of the sacristy where the culmination of Mary’s ascent to heaven, her coronation, alluded to the official image of the Venetian Republic as well as to the original dedication of the church of the Hieronymites. The entire history of the Virgin is present from Incarnation to Assumption. Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Annunciate figured in the spandrels of the triumphal arch before the presbytery signal the mythical foundation of the Venetian Republic on March 25, the feast day of the Annunciation. Moreover, the words of the Archangel Gabriel spoken to the Virgin at the moment of Icarnation, “Gratia plena” served as the scriptural substitution for Mary’s Immaculacy so vigorously defended by Jerome.  Venice too was seen as an uncorrupted virgin, Venetia Vergine, described by Thomas Coryat in the early seventeenth century as “the most glorious, peerelesse, and mayden citie of Venice: I call it mayden becaue it was neuer conquered…how this noble citie like a pure Virgin and incontaminated mayden… kept her virginity untouched these thousand two hundred and twelve years…”  

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    • Save Venice’s Next Major Project: The Renaissance Façade of the Scuola Grande di San Marco

    Dr. Matteo Ceriana

    Dr. Matteo Ceriana

    Excerpted from Studies in Venetian Art and Conservation, 1999

     

    In his chronicle of Venice, Domenico Malipiero describes the disastrous night of March 31, 1485, when the Scuola Grande di S. Marco was completely destroyed by fire. On that Maunday Thursday, the brethren of the Scuola had gathered in the sala del capitolo(chapter room) before leaving for the traditional religious service at Sant’Antonio di Castello. As they departed, however, they neglected to snuff out the candles on the altar. Shortly thereafter, a window curtain caught fire, and four hours later the meeting house lay in ruins. Forever lost were the façade built by Giovanni and Bartolomeo Bon, the elaborate interior decorations, the pulpit sculpted by Antonio Rizzo after a design by Gentile Bellini and Squarcione, and the ornate carved and gilded ceilings. The Dominican church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, directly adjacent to the Scuola, had barely escaped the fire intact. Consecrated in 1430, the most recent of the great Venetian houses of worship had immediately become the doges’ preferred site for both funerals and burials.

                The task of reconstructing the façade of the Scuola (founded in 1437) was facilitated by the existence of similar Venetian exteriors, in particular that of the Scuola della Misericordia, built by the Bons several years after completing the Scuola di S. Marco. The original brick façade had terminated in a complex pediment surmounted by Gothic spires and tall ogival windows. The imposing portal of stone and colored marbles, enriched by polychromes and gilding, contained a bas-relief in a lunette framed by an arched lintel of curved, fringed acanthus leaves.

                As was already noted by Francesco Sansovino in the Cinquecento, several elements from the original portal, which had escaped the fire, were incorporated in the new façade. These were the figure of Charity, and the lunette with St. Mark Venerated by Members of the Confraternity, which are now located over the main door. Other than for obvious reasons of economy, these reliefs were most certainly salvaged in order to give some sense of continuity with the past. Their reutilization would also seem to indicate that the works themselves were still acceptable to contemporary taste. In fact, the figure of Charity, attributed to Bartolomeo Bon, displayed iconographic and compositional elements reminiscent of classical statuary depicting the Muses. As such, it was among the first examples of early-Renaissance style in Venice.

                The lunette, a masterpiece of Adriatic sculpture of the first half of the century, has recently been attributed by Prof. Anne Markham Schultz to the Dalmatian Giorgio da Sebenico, who had probably been part of the Bons’ workshop before overseeing construction of the main cathedral in his native city. The style of the bas-relief reflects to what extent the artist was influenced by such Florentine sculptors as Nicolò and Pietro Lamberti and Nanni di Bartolo, all of whom were working in Venice at the end of the 1430s. The depiction of the brethren venerating their patron saint, a common medieval theme, was widely used in reliefs throughout the city. Here, however, it was completely transformed by the boldness of the figures standing out against the lunette, and by an entirely new sense of naturalism. The realistic depiction of the faces of the brethren and their Grand Guardian, Zoffredo da Brazza, kneeling before the Evangelist in adoration, was in keeping with local fashion in the realm of portrait painting. We know, for example, that the Venetian artist Jacopo Bellini was involved in a competition to paint a portrait of the young marquis, Lionello d’Este of Ferrara, in 1441. His rival was Pisanello, then the most celebrated court painter in Italy.

                Work on the current façade began immediately after the fire, when it was decided to cover it with a facing of ornate stonework in the latest architectural and decorative styles. The surface of polychrome marbles was, in fact, divided by a series of orders all’antica, a device already employed primarily by Florentine architects such as Alberti (for the Rucellais in Florence) and Bernardo Rossellino (for Pope Piccolomini in Pienza). Among the first examples in Venice were the church of S. Michele in Isola by Mauro Codussi (1469-75), the façade of the Camerlenghi Palace at the Rialto, and beginning in 1481, the church of Sta. Maria dei Miracoli.

                Built by Pietro Lombardo and his sons Tullio and Antonio, the Miracoli was the most complete, monumental representative of this style. In the spirit of the Basilica S. Marco, the wall surfaces of the votive chapel were covered with carved panels of colored marbles divided by pilasters in the two superior orders.

                Given the dimensions of the Scuola project, it is not surprising that the Lombardos first sought the assistance of Giovanni Buora, a trusted colleague and pupil of Pietro, and then Bartolomeo di Domenico (known as Duca). In fact, their workshop must have been the only one in Venice at the time that was capable of producing such an enormous quantity of stonework without sacrificing quality. (Among the various clauses in the construction contract, the brethren went so far as to stipulate that each stonemason should select his own materials in Istria.)

                The façade’s revetment was organized in a manner similar to that employed at the nearby church of the Miracoli, as illustrated by the plinth pilasters outlined by moldings on the ground floor and fluted on the first floor, the capitals with leaved and S-shaped scrolls, the decorative motifs of the entablatures, and the central bay, which differed in size from the lateral ones. It is therefore logical to assume that the Lombardos had designed the entire layout of both the street and canal facades well in advance of actual construction.

                As was often the case in Venice in analogous circumstances, the architects used as much of the original foundations and outside walls as possible. The building was, in fact, divided into two distinct parts. The larger left side corresponded to the entrance hall at ground level, and the chapter room on the first floor. On the ground floor, the right side led to an atrium with the tombs of the brethren. On the first floor, it gave access to the meeting room of the confraternity’s board of governors, or the sala dell’albergo, where relics of St. Mark were preserved.

                To underline the diverse functions of the interior rooms, the long façade juxtaposed two distinct segments articulated by three bays whose dimensions differed from those of the portal, and whose crowning elements displayed diverse styles. The whole was unified by the rhythmic sequence of the pilasters.

                In the main body, the portal was framed by an arch flanked by two freestanding columns supported by circular plinths placed on quadrangular bases. The bas-reliefs of the quadrangular plinths depicting giochi di putti(putti at play) were reminiscent of the motifs utilized around the middle of the century by Matteo De Pasti and Agostino di Duccio at Rimini in the decoration of the Tempio Malatestiano, and by Squarcione and Mantegna in Padua. A similar theme was also adopted by the Squarcionesque painter Marco Zoppo, a Bolognese who eventually opened a workshop in Venice, and Amadeo, whose putti can be seen on the plinths of the Colleoni Chapel portal in Bergamo.

                While it is not certain that the Scuola’s putti were salvaged from the original building, it is hoped that analyses resulting from their restoration will shed additional light on their history. What is certain, at this point, is that the grandiose dimensions of the main portal, among the most elaborate in Venice at the time, contrast dramatically with the rhythm of the order above the entablature. Its freestanding columns, which allude to triumphal arches of the ancient world such as that of Constantine in Rome, are also reminiscent of those on the façade of Basilica S. Marco erected in celebration of the imperial spoils brought back from Byzantium.

                According to a contractual agreement dated 1489, the brethren of the Scuola had commissioned from the Lombardo/Buora workshop a great storia(narrative cycle) in bas-relief for the upper register of the central bay. Although the project never came to fruition, the overall effect of such a figurative façade may be seen in several illustrations from the first years of the Cinquecento that are part of the Rothschild Notebook in the Cabinet of Drawings in the Louvre. These preliminary sketches of highly articulated facades decorated with complex figurations are the work of a Lombard master who had undoubtedly visited Rome and Venice.

                Despite the fact that the great narrative cycle was never executed, the façade of the Scuola is characterized by rich sculptural and decorative elements that were frequently inspired by classical motifs. In the frieze of the first order, for example, the volute-tailed griffins are similar to those found in the remains of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina and Trajan’s Forum in Rome. The Lombardo workshop may well have seen sketches of the classical prototypes made by one of their own stonemasons (cf. Codex Escurialensis by a Florentine master, but also Giuliano da Sangallo or Follower of Fra’ Giocondo), or perhaps by someone from Mantegna’s school in Padua. Other classically inspired elements include the quadrangular plinths at the base of the columns of the portal, which were used in Venice both by Mauro Codussi and the Lombardos, and the keystone of the arch over the main door, with Buora’s acrobatic putto bearing a cornucopia of gifts, which was copied from the Arch of the Sergi in Pola. This particular Roman monument was well known in Venice, having already inspired the door of the Arsenale (1460) and, in a figurative sense, that of the adjacent church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo.

                The fact that Mauro Codussi replaced the Lombardos in 1490, when the Scuola project was only half finished, may have been the result of pressure exerted by certain of the more influential brethren, including Pietro di Domenico, the Grand Guardian. (A close friend of Giovanni Bellini and family jeweler to King Mattia Corvino of Hungary, King Ferdinand of Spain, the Medicis, and Pope Innocent VIII, the exorbitantly wealthy di Domenico commissioned a marble encrusted altar from Cristoforo Solari and an altarpiece from Cima da Conegliano for his own tomb in Sta. Maria della Carità.) First as technical advisor together with Antonio Rizzo, and later as head architect, Codussi was ultimately responsible for the upper zone of the façade, which clearly exhibits his distinctive style.

                Foremost among the trademarks of the Bergamasque architect are the horizontal sections surmounted and clearly delineated by a string-course of cornices (cf. the façade of the church of S. Zaccaria, where the sequences of niches and panels are divided by freestanding columns), and the roofline defined by a row of lunettes (cf. S. Michele in Isola, and again S. Zaccaria). The windows of the main body are modeled after the Roman Porta dei Borsari in Verona, with its recessed niche and curved pediment. In the S. Marco façade, however, Codussi heightened their dramatic effect by placing two columns between the pilasters. This solution may have been inspired by sketches of a Roman tomb on the Appia Antica made by Giuliano da Sangallo in the Quattrocento. Codussi used the same technique for the entrance to the apse in S. Zaccaria, and again for the scalene(grand staircase) of the Scuola di S. Giovanni Evangelista, where he added a double row of pilasters to compensate for the classical severity of the arch centerpiece. As illustrated by the façade of the Colleoni Chapel in Bergamo, and in the later bas-reliefs at the base of the Certosa in Pavia, such a practice was commonplace in Lombardy.

                While no longer in charge of the S. Marco project, the Lombardo workshop continued to supply Codussi with numerous statues and ornamental sculptures. Among these were the warriors of the central attic, stylistically similar to those of the Vendramin tomb erected in the 1490s, the angels at prayer, and the winged females of the acroteria. These works exemplify the mature classical style of Antonio and Tullio Lombardo, both of whom had abandoned the Paduan and Mantegnesque prototypes that had so heavily influenced their father.

                The Lombardo brothers were also responsible for the trompe l’oeil sculptures in the lower part of the façade, which were undoubtedly inserted during the course of construction. Here both doors are flanked by a set of sculpted reliefs: a pair of lions guarding the main portal and scenes from the life of St. Mark at the sides of the entranceway to the albergo. While reminiscent of Bramante’s finto coro(false choir) at S. Satiro in Milan, where the illusionist reliefs create the effect of three-dimensional space, the arcades of S. Marco were also radically new in concept. In their attempt to integrate the Scuola with the architectural setting of Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo, the Lombardos succeeded in further emphasizing the range of spatial relationships and ambiguities contained in its façade.

                In all probability, these reliefs were sculpted in the last decade of the century, at the same time that painters such as Giovanni Bellini and Alvise Vivarini were exploring the art of linear perspective in their altarpieces for Venetian churches. At the beginning of the next century, Tullio Lombardo would create the three-dimensional Bernabò Altarpiece in S. Giovanni Crisostomo (1500-02), and The Miracle of the Reattached Foot, one of the two famous trompe l’oeil bas-reliefs for the chapel of the Arca del Santo in the Basilica of Sant’Antonio in Padua. His brother Antonio would sculpt the second of these, The Miracle of the Newborn Son, in the same illusionist style.

                In the Scuola di. S. Marco, the bas-reliefs on either side of the doorway to the sala dell’albergodepict the Conversion and Baptism of Anianusfrom the life of St. Mark. Both episodes speak of eternal salvation through the forgiveness of sins, and they seem to have been chosen in light of the room’s official function as burial place of the Scuola’s brethren. The idea of portraying the life of the patron saint in sculptural rather than pictorial form may well have been inspired by classical models such as the Hadrian reliefs from the Arch of Constantine in Rome.

     

                In his authoritative study of the Scuola, Paolo Paoletti suggests that the two episodes from the life of St. Mark might have been the remains of an altarpiece commissioned by the brethren from Giovanni Dalmata in 1498 and rejected two years later. These reliefs, however, which are clearly Lombardesque, reflect the style of other sculptures from the first decade of the 16th century. Among these are Tullio’s bas-relief for the tomb of Giovanni Mocenigo depicting the Baptism of Anianus, and more significantly, Antonio’s Miracle of the Newborn Son in Padua, where the classical motifs, treatment of the marble surfaces, facial features, hair styles, and profiles in low relief are reminiscent of the Scuola di S. Marco reliefs.

     

                A similar drawing by Giovanni Bellini from the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, which was recently cited by Christina Schmidt Arcangeli as a possible prototype, would seem to have been executed some years earlier. In particular, its setting is far too detailed and luminous to have influenced works of such monumental classicism as the Lombardesque bas-reliefs. It is entirely possible, however, that the Bellinis, who were highly regarded by members of the Scuola, provided Tullio and Antonio with suggestions regarding both style and composition.

                More importantly, certain compositional elements of the Lombardesque bas-reliefs can be seen in Giovanni Mansueti’s Baptism of Anianusfrom the Brera Pinacoteca in Milan, which was commissioned in 1518 as part of the cycle for the Scuola’s sala dell’albergo. This work also illustrates the brethren’s predilection for colored marble and architectural details covered with polychroming and gilding.

                The fact that Antonio Lombardo became an official member of the Scuola in 1499 might well indicate that his Anianusdates from approximately the same time. In any case, both bas-reliefs must have been sculpted before 1500, since their illusionist arcades are clearly visible in Jacopo de’ Barbari’s architectural view of 1500.

                By 1507, the entire façade, as well as its campo with the equestrian monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni by Verrocchio (1496), and the imposing exterior of the adjacent church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, had become a favorite subject of Venetian artists. In the Sermon of St. Mark in Alexandriaby Gentile and Giovanni Bellini (Milan, Brera Pinacoteca), while the general layout of the church in the main square resembles that of the Doges’ Palace, the marble decorations and curvilinear pediments recall the new façade of the Scuola Grande. Furthermore, among the faces in the Egyptian crowd are those of the brethren of the Scuola, clothed and positioned according to strict hierarchical order as they listen devotedly to their patron saint.

                In his celebrated engraving of the Calumny of Apelles, which also served as a model for Leon Battista Alberti, Gerolamo Mocetto also utilized the suggestive atmosphere of Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo. Transformed into an ancient Roman forum, the square provided a dramatic background to this famous allegorical painting of the ancient world.

                Perhaps the above scene from Francesco Colonna’s evocative Hypnerotomachia Poliphilimight serve as a fitting conclusion to the story of the Scuola. Printed in 1499 by Aldo Manuzio with illustrations by a Venetian artist, this famous philosophical novel was conceived by Colonna, who was then a Dominican friar in the convent of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, during the actual construction of the Scuola’s façade. In this passage, Poliphilo, a young man enamored of classical culture, wanders in a melancholy garden of ancient ruins muses about the extraordinary beauty and sumptuous style of a past now gone. The novel could have been Colonna’s premonition of today, with Poliphilo seeing the Scuola Grande façade of 500 years later, an extraordinary example of the beauty and style of the Renaissance, which are now a part of the past.

                Looking back, this premonition of lost grandeur might also have applied to the Republic itself. Only a few years later, it was to suffer the terrible defeat at Agnadello (1509) in the battle against all of Europe in the war of the League of Cambrai, and to lose power and self-confidence that had enabled it to build so rapidly and gloriously these incredible monuments of carved stone. 

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    • Santa Maria dei Miracoli: Preliminary Work Begins

    Mario Piana

    Mario Piana, Superintendency of Monuments

    Excerpted from the 1989 Save Venice Journal

     

    The sadly deteriorating condition of the Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, built in the 1480’s by Pietro Lombardo, has been caused by a number of factors, including atmospheric pollution, a very unfavorable interior microclimate, and the aggressive nature of the lagoon environment itself.

    The entire structure of the church, both inside and out, is faced in different marbles. These reliefs and sculptural decorations, panels, fascia, inserts, and cornices have suffered by far the most damage. In fact, all of the stone materials used in construction – from the Pavonazzetto (“little purple”), Carrara Bardiglio, and “Verona red” marbles to the Istrian limestone, from the Lesbio, Proconnesioand Jassensemarbles to the red and green porphyry, the green Cipollino(“onion skin”) and Verde Anticostone – have been affected to a greater or lesser degree. Everywhere one can observe the phenomena of crumbling, flaking, decementation, cracking and pitting. There is also extensive evidence on the stones of particle deposits, incrustation, and whitish saline efflorescences and subefflorescences.

    We at the Superintendency of Monuments have two primary objectives as we begin this major restoration funded by Save Venice: to contain, or remove, the essential causes of deterioration, and to modify the current microclimate of the interior so as to stabilize thermohygrometric conditions – particularly as we hope the church will once again be host to parishioners and visitors alike.

    Prior to beginning the actual work of restoration, the Superintendency has devoted a great deal of time and effort to preliminary studies, in addition to bibliographical and archival research, and we have prepared a detailed survey of the premises themselves. We have already completed, or are in the process of completing, magnetometric, mineralogical-petrographic and physical-chemical testing. We have also been measuring the speed of sound waves, and conducting various environmental analyses, including monitoring the exchange of vapor between surface and environment, air circulation and surface temperatures. Finally, we are gathering and testing atmospheric particles and pollutants.

    The successive restoration phases, which have yet to be defined in detail, are extremely experimental in nature. At this time, they include the following: overall desalination of the entire stone surface – whether in situor through removal of individual stone blocks to the laboratory for immersion in specially designed tubs; desalination of the underlying brickwork, with the use of absorbent chemicals and materials, temperature controls, and possible washings; and stabilization of the interior environment through a self-regulatory system that will respond to long- and short-term variations in climatic conditions.

    After completion of these essential studies, we will then proceed to repair, refurbish and completely clean the building. Once the restoration and cleaning processes have taken place, we plan to treat all elements with a protective coating of resin.

    Of particular significance to all our efforts is the fact that every aspect of this project – from the preliminary studies and research to proposed solutions to the actual restoration itself – will make an important contribution to the development of new methodologies for use in other major restorations throughout the city of Venice.

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    • Santa Maria dei Miracoli: A Miracle of Restoration

    Randolph H. Guthrie

    Randolph H. Guthrie

    Excerpted from the 1995 Save Venice Journal

     

    In 1986, when the then president of Save Venice, Laurence Lovett, and his Executive Director, Beatrice Guthrie, decided to adopt the Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli for restoration, there were more than a few people who thought that they had taken on more than they could handle. After all, in its best year up to that time, the organization had raised scarcely fifty thousand dollars. The Miracoli carried a price tag of nearly three million. How could this ever be done?

    Eight years later, after enormous amounts of work on the part of many people, the answer is that their vision and optimism are fast becoming a reality. The money is in hand. Completion is only a year away. The results so far are spectacular. People who have recently seen this jewel restored to its ancient splendor have stood almost transfixed by its extraordinary beauty.

    It has been a long road. Three years of scientific studies were required before the actual restoration work could begin. The building had to be isolated from the rising salt water of the canal. The decorative marble slabs were taken down from the walls and washed in distilled water for weeks to remove their accumulated salts. The corrosive cement which was used in an 18C restoration to attach the slabs was chipped away and the slabs rehung on the same bronze hooks which the Lombardo fashioned 500 years ago and which were still in place under the cement. The air space keeping the marbles dry was thus restored. The bricks were cleaned using mud packs to soak out the salt. The doors and windows were remade and their marble frames repaired to keep out the rain. The rose window was completely rebuilt. The exterior statues above each window and on the roof were carefully cleaned and braced to prevent them from falling (the Virgin on the roof over the entrance was within weeks of tumbling into the piazza). All of the extraordinary interior carvings – the finest works of the Lombardi – were also cleaned and preserved. All this was done and much more. Now, the street and façade sides are finished inside and out. The interior of the water side is done, and outside scaffolding is up along the canal and around the apse.

    As all this was being done, we came to the unhappy realization that the beauty of the restoration highlighted our failure to have included the ceiling in the project. Five hundred years of candle wax and smoke had blackened its decorations, but test cleanings revealed their magnificence – 50 painted prophets in individual coffers between decoratively painted beams. It seemed a tragedy to leave this treasure covered in grime juxtaposed with the gleaming marbles just below, but the cost of restoration seemed beyond our reach.

    One has to be lucky to find an angel in this world, but they are there. As we were struggling with this problem, one of them happened by to tell us that he had some money for a worthy project. It is not called the “Miracoli” for nothing, and it is not the first time that money for this church has seemingly fallen from heaven. Pietro, Tullio and Antonio Lombardo and the “Madonna of Miracles” are watching over their creation. The scaffolding for the ceiling is going up, and it will soon be restored.

    The restoration of Santa Maria dei Miracoli has been carried out by Ottorino Nonfarmale and his team of skilled technicians under the supervision of Mario Piana (senior architect in the Superintendency of Monuments) and Dr. Giovanna Nepi Scirè (Superintendent of Fine Arts). The scientific studies on the interior environment and the physical condition of the structure are the province of Dr. Vasco Fassina, chief of the Stone Conservation Laboratory of the Superintendency of Fine Arts, Venice. Professor Manfred Schuller of the University of Bamberg, Germany and his assistants have made detailed drawings of the architecture (each and every stone). Most importantly, Save Venice has been privileged to have as its Project Coordinator, its Vice-President, Professor Wolfgang Wolters, who has been the guiding light and inspiration for this project.

    The restoration of Santa Maria dei Miracoli has been a labor of love – one which has captured the affection of the city and been a source of great pleasure to those whose tireless efforts have made it possible. For all of you who have helped, and for our Board whose dream this was, perhaps your best reward is to stand near the church and watch the Venetians coming by to gaze in admiration and respect, and sometimes wonderment, smiling and nodding as if to say, “well done and thank you”.

     

     

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    • San Salvador Restored

    Ettore Merkel

    Ettore Merkel, Superintendency of Fine Arts, Venice

    Excerpted from the 1989 Save Venice Journal

     

    The Church of San Salvador is believed to have been founded around the year 635 A.D. by Saint Magnus, Bishop of Oderzo and later of Eraclea. Dedicated to the Transfiguration of the Lord, it was originally designed to resemble the Most Holy Anastasis Church in Jerusalem. Rebuilt in the 1100’s and again in the 1500’s, the church is one of the finest examples of late Renaissance architecture in Venice. The building was redesigned in 1506 by the architect Giorgio Spavento for the Regular Canons of San Salvatore, a wealthy monastic order from Bologna, who succeeded the Canons of Saint Augustine. After Spavento’s death, his plans were carried forward by Pietro and Tullio Lombardo (1507), and eventually brought to completion by Jacopo Sansovino in 1528.

    Sansovino’s work is also evident in the church’s interior, where he designed the marble front of the organ (1530), and the stately Tomb of Doge Francesco Venier(1557-58) in collaboration with the sculptor Alessandro Vittoria.

    Since 1984, the American committee Save Venice Inc. has supported the restoration of a number of major works in San Salvador. The first of these, begun in 1985, was the Luganegheri Altar, commissioned by the Scuola dei Luganegheri, or “Sausage-makers’ Guild”, as their personal shrine. Here the various elements in sculpted marble date from the turn of the seventeenth century, as do the two statues Saint Roch and Saint Sebastianon either side, both signed by Alessandro Vittoria. An important addition in 1729 was the tabernacle, with its relief on the door depicting Saint Anthony Abbot.

    The actual restoration process included reinforcing the stone surfaces with silicon resins, removing dust and oil sediment from lampblack that had darkened the marble, filling in the cracks with “marble dust” and “Primal” resin, and adding a protective coating of microcrystalline wax.

    Palma il Giovane’s altarpiece of the same period, with the Madonna of the Rosary Appearing to Saint Anthony Abbot and Saints Roch and Francis,was restored as well. According to the historian Ridolfi, the painting had blackened so rapidly that the artist himself attempted to “touch it up” only several years after its completion. Ridolfi also tells us that Vittoria, who was displeased at having Andrea Vicentino’s Glory of Angelsin the lunette above, had insisted on Palma’s being given the commission for the altarpiece. Even so, the quality of the work is extremely uneven, especially in the lower section, where the figures of the three saints show the hand of a lesser artist or artists – possibly Sante Peranda.

    In the same year, Save Venice provided funds for restoration of the paintings commissioned by the Cornaro family for the two altars in the right transept. The first of these, which depicts Saints Roch, Lawrence, Francis de Sales and Anne,was executed by Girolamo Brusaferro in 1729; the second is the work of Francesco Fontebasso (1737), and represents Saint Lawrence Giustinian and other Saints.Both altarpieces, judged to be among the artists’ finest creations, were not only blackened and oxydized, but had also suffered blistering and color loss, particularly on the margins. During restoration they were reinforced, relined and cleaned, losses were filled in, other areas touched up, and the entire surface protected with a special varnish.

    The Martyrdom of Saint Theodore, a large painting on the wall of the chapel dedicated to the same saint, was yet another of Save Venice’s projects. Originally attributed to Bonifacio Veronese or Paris Bordon, its surface was completely blackened, and its support frame both warped and damaged due to earlier inept attempts at restoration. During cleaning and repairs, we discovered the date 1553 on one of the pilasters, and on the margin, the initials of the Scuola Grande di S. Teodoro, who originally commissioned the work. Two other inscriptions bearing the dates 1627 and 1768 would indicate earlier attempts at restoration. The actual author of the painting may well have been the Paduan Stefano dell’Arzere, whose work entitled The Giving of the Keys to Saint Peterfor the Praglia Abbey is similar in both style and tone.

    The most ambitious of Save Venice’s projects for San Salvador, undertaken in 1986, was the restoration of Jacopo Sansovino’s Tomb of Doge Francesco Venier (1557-58).

    Several years after its completion, to give more light to this important work – as well as to Titian’s Annunciation– the architect Vincenzo Scamozzi had lanterns cut into the three central cupolas.

    In designing this most classical of monuments, which was erected after the Doge’s death by his brother Piero, Sansovino took his inspiration from the triumphal arches of ancient Rome. Giovanni Donato’s panegyric is inscribed on the gilded stone in the center, under the bier. In niches on either side are the allegorical figures of Charity, attributed to Tommaso da Lugano, and Faith, a masterpiece of Sansovino’s maturity. The figure of the Doge lies under the barrel vault of the arch. In the lunette, the Pietà between Saint Francis and the Dogeis dramatized by heavy gilding, and represents a youthful work by Vittoria.

    The same techniques of restoration adopted for the LuganegheriAltarwere applied to the Venier Tomb.First, however, the gilded, polychromatic surfaces were reinforced with “Paraloid B 72” and “K 40” fixative. The results obtained, which required virtually no retouching whatsoever, were truly astonishing. After the thick layers of oil and dust deposits had been removed, we were at last able to appreciate the extraordinary qualities of one of the most perfect examples of funerary monuments of the Cinquecento.

    From 1987 to 1988, Save Venice funded the restoration of four large canvas-backed lunette paintings that occupy the uppermost part of the walls in transept cross-vault. Prior to being restored, their extremely poor state of preservation had made attribution almost impossible.

    From an artistic standpoint, the most significant of these works is the painting that we have now identified as Natalino da Murano’s Holy Trinity.After considerable retouching, the fine draftsmanship and extraordinary use of light – reminiscent of both Pordenone and the early maturity of Titian – are once again in evidence.

    The next two lunettes – a Resurrection and Eternal Father between the Savior and the Virgin Mary– are primarily of art historical interest. The former, with its vigorous narrative tone, has now been attributed to Stefano dell’Arzere. The latter, with its distinctly “counter-reform” style, was commissioned by the Scuola di Santa Maria Nova, and may well have been the work of a pupil of Palma il Giovane – possibly Girolamo Pilotti.

    The final lunette painting, depicting The Glory of Saint Theodore, was by far the most seriously damaged. Preliminary X-ray examinations revealed a number of pentimenti, as well as nineteenth-century retouchings that have made its attribution extremely difficult. In any case, we are now able to identify it as having been executed between the 1600 and 1700’s, most probably by an artist from the Veneto region.

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    • Restorations of Late-16C Brussels Tapestries on the Deeds of Scipio Africanus for the Giorgio Cini Foundation

    Frederick Ilchman

    Frederick Ilchman

    Excerpted from Studies in Venetian Art and Conservation, 1999

     

    Tapestries were among the most prized objects in Renaissance Europe. They were made of conspicuously expensive materials, usually silk and occasionally gold and silver threads, which offered rich tonalities and subtle effects of changing light depending on the viewer’s position. They also constituted movable murals, large-scale pictorial decorations that could be rolled up and transferred to a different room or building much more easily than a canvas painting. Finally, they served the more practical function of isolating rooms from damp walls and decorating, often temporarily, otherwise empty spaces. Although the actual execution of the textiles was entrusted to specialized weavers, some of the most prominent painters of 16th-century Italy, notably Raphael and Giulio Romano, executed designs and full-scale cartoons. Since the greatest center of Renaissance tapestry manufacture was Brussels, their restoration may seem a surprising task for Save Venice. Though largely imported, tapestries represent another facet of the accumulated riches of Venice, and their inherently fragile materials often require urgent conservation.

    In the winter of 1998-99, Save Venice sponsored the restoration of the fourth and final tapestry in a series depicting the deeds of the Roman general Scipio Africanus (c. 234-183 B.C.). Entitled Scipio Concluding an Alliance with Siface, King of the Massili, against the Carthaginians(136.5 x 104 in.), it was made of wool and silk in Brussels at the end of the 16th century. All four tapestries, which now hang in the Sala degli Arazzi (Hall of Tapestries) at the Giorgio Cini Foundation on the Island of S. Giorgio Maggiore, have been restored through grants from The James R. Dougherty, Jr. Foundation, which were made possible by Beatrice Rossi-Landi, a member of the Save Venice board and president of Young Friends of Save Venice.

    Although the smallest of the set, Scipio Concluding an Alliance with Sifacetook the most time to restore. The Morasutti-Amistani studio of Padua was responsible for its conservation under the supervision of Dr. Fiorella Spadavecchia of the Superintendency of Fine Arts of Venice. The restoration was prompted by the pronounced wearing and disintegration of the fibers, particularly the silk thread, in all areas of the tapestry’s surface. The borders were fraying, and immediate attention was required to prevent more loss of thread. Above all, the surface was extremely dirty, with much embedded dust that further threatened the fibers.

    A thorough cleaning, not often performed in tapestry restorations, began the process. The tapestry was washed in a special outdoor pool with water and a natural soap of vegetable extracts that created a pH-neutral solution. Each different type of thread was tested for color fastness beforehand. Suspended on a bridge above the pool, the restorers pressed the surface to loosen the dust and dirt. Once the tapestry was clean, workers attached a new canvas backing for support, using a fine cotton thread.

    With the condition of the tapestry stabilized, the aesthetic aspects of the restoration could be considered. First, the many discolored spots resulting largely from 19th-century restorations were removed, as well as earlier patches and repairs that were themselves tearing the delicate fibers of the weaving. Losses in the details were painstakingly repaired with new threads, a concept similar to that of inpainting in a painting restoration. Silk threads, specially dyed in the Padua laboratory to ensure accurate color, were used throughout. All the new threads were less densely sewn, however, in order to make the restorations easy to spot up close. These repairs restored the balance of the tones in the tapestry, bringing out the foreshortenings in the figures and the full volumes of the draperies of the two principal figures. Two months of delicate work by a team of three restorers brought new life to a dull and muted textile, recapturing much of the glittering splendor of its original appearance four centuries ago.

    Thus Scipio Concluding an Alliance with Sifacejoins the three other tapestries restored by Save Venice in their place of honor in the Sala degli Arazzi: The Continence of Scipio, The Election of Scipio as Edile, and Scipio Freeing Massiva.Little is known of the origins of this cycle. Although the designs for tapestries were typically executed by painters rather than the tapestry weavers themselves, the specific artist behind these compositions remains unknown. It has been suggested that the artist was a Liège painter who worked under the influence of Frans Floris. As seen in the weaver’s marks woven in the lower right corners of the set, the tapestries were produced in Brussels towards the end of the 16th century in the atelier of Franz Geubels (c. 1540 – c. 1590), who specialized in large cycles of tapestries on mythological subjects. A different artist, working on older traditions, probably designed the borders, which feature personifications and scenes of Orpheus, Hercules, and Venus and Adonis. The four tapestries were located in the Castello of Monselice in the collection of General Gallieni until the 1950s, when Count Vittorio Cini, founder of the Giorgio Cini Foundation, purchased then in Cannes. In 1962, Count Cini donated the cycle to the Cini Foundation to adorn the walls of a new concert and lecture hall. This grand room, originally constructed in the Renaissance for the use of novice monks and called the Salone di Noviziato, was completely rebuilt in 1953 along the lines of the earlier structure. With the donation of the tapestries, the hall’s name was changed to the Sala degli Arazzi.

    The episodes from the life of Roman general Scipio Africanus Major ‘the Elder’, which loosely reflect the textual sources of Livy’s Roman Historyand Petrarch’s Africa, commemorate the most celebrated Roman general after Julius Caesar. Praised as much for his judgment and planning as his skills on the battlefield, Scipio won victories in Spain and North Africa against the Carthaginians that brought to a close the Second Punic War (218-202 B.C.). Of the four episodes recounted in the Cini series, only The Continence of Scipiowas a common subject in Renaissance art. In this story, a young woman was given to the general as a prize of war following the capture of the city of New Carthage in Spain. Upon hearing that his prize was already betrothed, Scipio generously exercised continence (self-restraint), and restored her to her fiancé. Although the range of emotions and wealth of detail would have naturally appealed to artists, the act of clemency itself was particularly attractive to 16th-century patrons, who wished to advertise qualities similar to those possessed by the commendable ancient Roman.

    Indeed, the exploits of Scipio Africanus sit squarely in the tradition of uomini illustri(famous men) in tapestry, sculpture, and painting, offering stories from the ancient world as heroic examples to be heeded. Nevertheless, the other subjects in the series are quite unusual. Although based on Livy (28:18), the episode of Scipio Concluding an Alliance with Sifacemay have been chosen simply to round out the portrayal of Scipio Africanus as a planner and diplomat as well as warrior. Since Siface later betrays this agreement and turns against Scipio, the depiction of the moment of alliance stresses the integrity of the Roman general in contrast to the duplicitous African king. Moreover, the tapestry of Scipio Freeing Massiva (Livy 28:19) seems to be the only representation of this event in Renaissance art. The obscurity of these three episodes suggests that there were originally many more tapestries in the cycle.

    The most prominent precedent for the life of Scipio Africanus in tapestry was a magnificent cycle completed in 1535 for King Francis I of France. Woven after designs by Giulio Romano, it comprised twenty-two scenes from Scipio’s life in the field and his triumphal return to Rome. In an attempt to retrieve the gold threads following the French Revolution in 1797, the originals were destroyed. Fortunately, however, many parts of the cycle survive in 16th- and 17th-century copies. Giulio’s designs, which feature large crowds placed in horizontal formats and seen from relatively high viewpoints, present compositions similar to Raphael’s later paintings in the Vatican Stanze, and of course the famous Sistine Chapel tapestries executed for Pope Leo X. The Cini tapestries, by contrast, offer a narrower focus: few figures seen close-up from a low viewpoint. Scipio himself, rather than the narrative action, is the hub of the composition.

    The Giorgio Cini Foundation now occupies most of the buildings of San Giorgio Maggiore, a Benedictine monastery founded in 982. Besides the Sala degli Arazzi, some of the most notable structures of the complex include the refectory, cloister, and church designed by Andrea Palladio between 1560 and 1580, and the library and grand staircase designed by Baldassare Longhena between 1641 and 1653. Following the Napoleonic suppressions of religious orders, the buildings of San Giorgio deteriorated dramatically during the decades of use as warehouses and as a military base. In 1951, after more than a century of neglect, Count Cini created the Giorgio Cini Foundation in memory of his son Giorgio Cini, victim of an airplane crash, and initiated a complete restoration of the church and monastery buildings dedicated to his son’s namesaint. Count Cini then used the restored buildings to house education initiatives: a maritime academy, a vocational school, and various scholarly centers, including an Institute for the History of Art, an Institute for the History of the Venetian State, and an Institute for Music. These institutes promote important research on Venetian culture through their libraries, conferences, master classes and musical performances, exhibitions, and publications. Save Venice, in part through the work of its board members, has been actively involved for many years in the flourishing cultural programs of the Cini Foundation. The Foundation is a frequent host for lectures and other activities of Save Venice. Moreover, Save Venice has celebrated this close relationship by sponsoring numerous restorations of the cultural patrimony of the monastery and the Foundation. Over the past decade, Save Venice can take satisfaction in the cleaning of a Carletto Veronese altarpiece, the restoration of the famous 18th-century church organ, and now the preservation of the four Brussels tapestries of the deeds of Scipio Africanus.

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    • Restoration of Polyptych of Saint Vincent Ferrer, in Santi Giovanni e Paolo

    W. R. Rearick

    W. R. Rearick

    Excerpted from the 1995 Save Venice Journal

     

    One of the most admired and discussed masterpieces of the early Renaissance in Venice has been given a thorough cleaning and restoration and was returned on October 7, 1994 to its place over the second altar on the right in the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo.

    Painted on nine poplar panels, its format follows a general late-Gothic plan with the patron saint of the altar, Vincent Ferrer, as the central figure flanked by Saint Christopher at left and Saint Sebastian at right. In the tope register, the central space contains the pathetic figure of the dead Christ supported by two angels, and the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Annunciate occupy the outside spaces. The three long predella scenes in the dado depict some of the miracles performed by Saint Vincent Ferrer.

    Like most quattrocento paintings, this altar has only very scant mention in the church documents of the time. Vincent Ferrer was the patron saint of the confraternity, organized in 1450, though he was not to be canonized until 1458. Documents of 1453-54 record a payment for wood to be used in the area of the altar which the confraternity had acquired in the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the great Gothic Dominican establishment in Venice. Another payment for wood was probably made in 1464, but in neither case was it specified that it was for panels to be painted. This would, in any case, normally have been the responsibility of the artist commissioned to carry out the pictures.

    First, but not necessarily immediately on the completion of the pictures, the ensemble was framed in a delicate, carved and gilded wood frame in the newly introduced Renaissance style. This was encapsulated in an imposing marble frame in the years around 1523 to match that which would contain Titian’s great, lost Saint Peter Martyr altar on the wall opposite.

    The ensemble would be described for the first time only in Francesco Sansovino’s 1581 Guide to Venice, where it was called a work of Giovanni Bellini. Many other early authors ascribed it to other painters of the second half of the quattrocento. This uncertainty has permitted modern scholars to indulge in a wide and not very fruitful speculation about the painter. Most agree that it is the most monumental and innovative work of its type and time.

    The recent careful restoration, undertaken with the aid of Save Venice’s generous Board member, Lily Auchincloss, was supervised by Dr. Alessandro Sponza of the Soprintendenza ai Beni Culturali di Venezia and was carried out by a team directed by Valentina Piovan assisted by Francesca Faleschini. Although the panel pictures are generally in a fairly good state of preservation – only in the hair of Christ and a few candle burns in Saint Vincent has there been a significant loss of surface – the paintings have gained enormously in legibility, and their remarkably fresh pictorial experiments can at last be seen in full effect.

    The splendid gilt frame, still under discussion as to its date, was rather more severely worn, but only the shell in the upper arch, a space once occupied by a painting of God the Father in Benediction, and a few small strips were discovered to have been substituted over the centuries. The God the Father was removed to the confraternity meeting hall in 1777 and was subsequently lost. It might have resembled that figure in the lunette of the Saint Sebastian altar (Venice, Accademia) of 1460-1461, although Bellini’s role in that project has yet to be established. Otherwise, the Saint Vincent Ferrer altarpiece has survived intact and is once again visible in all its fascinating pictorial splendor.

    Now we are in a better position to analyze the Saint Vincent Ferrer altar and to offer some answers to the questions it has always prompted. If one abandons the proposal that it was painted by Giovanni Bellini around 1455, a date which would place it five years before the much more primitive altar he signed jointly as a debutant with his father Jacopo and his older brother Gentile, its status becomes clearer. Created for the Basilica of Saint Anthony in Padua in 1460, the surviving fragments of that altarpiece show it to have been firmly set in the outmoded late-Gothic style of old Jacopo. Instead, a date just before 1464 permits the Saint Vincent Ferrer altarpiece to be integrated more comfortably into Giovanni Bellini’s stylistic evolution. He was, in fact, decidedly slow in learning the analytical definition characteristic of his brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna, who had married his sister, Nicolosia, in 1453.

    Only around 1462 in such paintings as The Crucifixion(Venice, Museo Civico Correr), does Giovanni begin to synthesize his native naturalism with a more assured compositional equilibrium. This quickly elides into the energetic enthusiasm he drew upon to meet the challenge of the Saint Vincent Ferrer altarpiece, probably the largest and most ambitious project he had undertaken up to that time. Here he sharpened the clarity of his contour, tightened the sculptural integrity of physical form, and concentrated the decorative flourish of a glistening, high-keyed tonality.

    He did not, however, abandon his delight in exploring naturalistic, optical effects such as the silver-raspberry luminescence of the Archangel’s silken sleeve or the reflected light over the water in the Christopher and Sebastian panels. Reflectography done during the restoration demonstrated that he painted the feet and staff of Saint Christopher before veiling them in the delicate glazes of the water, through which they remain partly visible.

    It is this detail which helps in determining the date of the ensemble. Antonio Vivarini signed and dated (1464) the Saint Anthony Abbott polyptych (Rome, Vatican). In it, the single innovative figure is the Saint Christopher whose feet are seen through the water in an awkward derivation from Bellini’s saint. Thus, the Bellini panel must have been finished by 1464, perhaps just done so that Vivarini could borrow but not fully comprehend its innovative pictorial treatment.

    The Crucifixion(Paris, Louvre) follows closely upon the Saint Vincent Ferrer, and it is but a slight step to the powerful distillation of his earliest great masterpieces such as The Dead Christ with the Virgin and Saint John(Milan, Brera) of about 1466.

    Is this ensemble exclusively the work of Giovanni Bellini? Scholars will doubtless continue to debate the issue, but I am convinced that the six major panels are entirely his. The more placid, but equally assured, Saint Vincent seems to me to have been the last part executed in part because its frame was designed as a door with a lock, clearly suggesting that initially it was intended to be a door which could be opened to reveal the saint’s relics hidden inside the cupboard-like space behind.

    The predella presents a different problem. Marcantonio Michiel, writing in the 1530’s, ascribed the predella to the Paduan miniaturist Lauro Padovano, without naming the painter of the major panels. More recent research has confirmed that Bellini employed Lauro to do predella pictures, doubtless because his abilities lay in small scale works. A few years later, they collaborated again in the Saint John the Evangelist altarpiece, a lost work datable to slightly after 1468 of which Lauro’s predella (Berchtesgarten, Schlossmuseum) is a more mature development of ideas already present in the Saint Vincent Ferrer predella. The present predella scenes are a charming but superficial amalgam of Paduan elements learned from Pizolo and Mantegna, Ferrarese types borrowed from Ercole dei Roberti, and dull, liverish color absorbed from Verona masters. Their discursive charm only sets the powerful experiments of Giovanni Bellini’s saints just above them into more striking relief.

    It has long been known that all three of Bellini’s saints have sketches on the backs of the wooden panels. Painted in black oil with a pointed brush, they are in character-like enlarged drawings. Often described to the Rococo master Diziani who is recorded as having restored the altar in the eighteenth century, they can now, thanks to the present restoration, be seen and studied in detail. Large and audacious, or delicate and witty by turns, these drawings seem all to be of quattrocento origin. One might suggest that they fit best with Lauro Padovano’s lively narrative style; perhaps Bellini left the addition of the predella to Lauro who doodled on the backs of Giovanni’s pictures as he assembled the finished ensemble.

    Finally, the handsome gold frame is now better understood after the technical examination just concluded. Sometimes thought to date long after Bellini’s paintings, it now seems consonant in detail and concept with the still new Renaissance ideal of classical framing which was just becoming widespread around 1464. Doubtless the last part of the ensemble to be executed, it may still be dated just after the middle of the decade of the 1460’s. This would be consonant with my view that the altar was executed, and perhaps conceived, over a rather longer span than has been supposed.

    Save Venice has once again sponsored a restoration project that has sparked a lively exchange of ideas and, one hopes, an enlightened understanding of the Saint Vincent Ferrer polyptych now restored to its rightful position as one of the most striking masterpieces of early Renaissance painting in Venice.

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    • Restorations Funded by Save Venice in San Giovanni in Bragora

    Alessandro Sponza

    Alessandro Sponza, Superintendency of Fine Arts

    Excerpted from the 1997 Save Venice Journal

     

    The origins of the church of San Giovanni in Bragora are lost in time. Legend has it that it was one of seven original churches on the island of Venice, that it was founded by St. Magno, Bishop of Oderzo, who accompanied those who fled the Lombards to these islands in 639 A.D.

    Pietro Barbo, a priest of the church, was elected Pope Paul II in 1464, and shortly thereafter, extensive renovations of San Giovanni in Bragora were undertaken. The church originally had an Orthodox plan with the altar area enclosed by an iconostasis. This was removed to create the basilica plan. The wooden altars were removed or substantially changed according to the new Renaissance view of interiors. At the end of the 15C, when the restorations of the structure were completed, new pictorial and sculptural decorations were created. The church must then have looked more or less as it does today with a great number of the same art works that still make her one of the most significant repositories of the early historical and artistic heritage of the early Renaissance in the Veneto.

    From the beginning, Save Venice’s restorations in San Giovanni in Bragora have been done in a systematic way, with an aim at a total refurbishment of the building and of its treasures. This has nearly been reached. I would like to emphasize how important it is that Save Venice chose to rescue not just the paintings but also their architectural context, without which the paintings would be isolated. In this way, the original unity, values, and complexities are also restored.

    It is nearly ten years since Save Venice began funding restorations of works of art in this church which had suffered from the ravages of time and man. In 1988, Save Venice contributed to the restoration of the altarpiece by Giambattista Cima da Conegliano together with its marble frame, one of the most important documents not only of this artist but of the entire history of the Venetian late quattrocento. The occasion for the painting was the renovation of the frame, part of the original high altar, in 1492-4.

    The painting was very difficult to move due to its weight. (This led to a much criticized restoration made in the late 18C by Domenico Magiotto). Before the present restoration, the darkness of the painting obscured the clear atmosphere that emphasizes the outlines of the figures, the contours of the landscape, and the depth of the composition. After a delicate cleaning, we can now fully appreciate not only the general chromatic and figurative composition but also those details that, due to heavy cleanings of the past, were previously denied us.

    The restored landscape, a world of castle and fortresses, is not imaginary or fairy-like but is part of the artist’s childlike memories of a world made of landscapes with beautiful rivers and lakes, a cheerful recollection of a better world of virginal figures and ideas. Cima’s native Conegliano was the “beautiful native land” admired by Sansovino. This restoration has also brought to our attention the work of an early Renaissance, Venetian architect, Sebastiano Mariani da Lugano, whose decorations and most of the original 1495 gilding had been completely hidden and unknown.

    The restoration of the stuccos of the presbytery ceiling above the painting were part of the total restoration of a work of art. They were created between 1581 and 1604 (the dates of the first and second editions of the Venetia Città Nobilissimaby Sansovino). Alessando Vittoria, sculptor and architect from Trento, the most important representative of the late Mannerist style in the lagoon area, was the planner and supervisor of this work. His son-in-law, Ottaviano Ridolfi, helped as a stuccoist. The present restoration has brought out once again “the stucco and gold”. It has also revealed decorations, forgotten since Boschini described them in 1664, in the ovals centered in the four vaults. These are elegant, thin linear forms using the typical two colors, white and gold, of the late mannerist style which could hardly be seen before. Indeed, there was fear that damage to them might have been irreversible.

    In 1991, the triptych Madonna and Child between Saint Andrew and Saint John the Baptistby Bartolomeo Vivarini, dated 1478 and signed on the central panel, was restored by Save Venice. In the 19C, art historians said that these panels were “a caricature of Mantagna’s style, mostly painted by an unskilled assistant, with a vulgar St. Andrew and a badly drawn John the Baptist.” This is because, until this century, the Venetian art historians were not able to focus on the whole Vivarini family which, with Antonio, Bartolomeo and Alvise, was, from the second half of the quattrocentoto the beginning of the new century, the only alternative to the Bellinis.

    In 1935, Vittorio Moschini, reevaluating Bartolomeo Vivarini and his role in Veneto painting of the second half of the quattrocento,focused precisely on this triptych which is now unanimously recognized as one of the most important paintings of the artist.

    Thanks to this restoration, the penetrating line, the enamel color, the “hidden and transcendent look,” the vivid colors – sharp and precise and sometimes even acrid – were made visible once again. Fortunately, this triptych in San Giovanni in Bragora was in better condition than many other paintings of the artist, allowing a complete restoration and bringing back the original colors, particularly the blues. In other paintings by Bartolomeo, these colors have been irreversibly lost.

    One of the most significant monuments (and most evocative for music lovers) is the baptistry, whose font (probably made from a big 14C capital) and surroundings were restored by Save Venice two years ago. Antonio Vivaldi was baptized here, and it is here where the “red priest” sang his first Mass and where he must have first practiced the art which made him famous. The church of San Giovanni in Bragora and not the nearby Pietà church (which was built after Vivaldi’s death) was the place of his first musical experiences.

    The original area around the altar of the Orthodox layout extended out to the first two Renaissance pillars of the aisle and was enclosed by the marble slabs that are now mounted on the side walls of the presbytery with a marble bench underneath. This change reveals the hand of Sebastiano Mariani, as does the row of columns that divides the nave into three parts. Before Save Venice’s restoration, the gilded decorations of these columns were invisible under layers of dirt, candle smoke, and candle wax. In the same way, the water basin at the doorway was cleaned and given back that visual dignity which its aesthetic qualities deserved.

    Another major restoration has been made by Save Venice in the magnificent chapel of San Giovanni Elemosinario. This chapel has been a special favorite of certain people because it contains the body of a saint from Constantinople. In past years, a restoration of this chapel had been started but remained unfinished due to a lack of funds. Save Venice took it over and continued the restoration. The work included the marble balustrades, the Istrian stone frames which run along the walls, the late Gothic decoration of the chapel’s entrance, and the extremely darkened altar, whose dirt and degradation were highlighted by its proximity to the previously cleaned and restored stucco-decorated vault.

    Almost hidden behind the main altar, there is a door and dorsals in briar wood of the 17C which were in very bad condition. The restoration, financed by Save Venice, was finished in late April, and it has revealed an unexpected formal elegance and refined execution that very often accompanied the works of underestimated artisans for which this city is famous.

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    • Protecting the Treasures in the Sacristies of Venice’s Churches: How and Why They Are Being Saved

    Fiorella Spadavecchia

    Fiorella Spadavecchia

    Excerpted from the 1993 Save Venice Journal

     

    In addition to being the repositories of numerous masterpieces of Venetian art, the city’s churches also house an extensive collection of sacred ornaments and vestments, less known to the general public, but of extraordinary artistic and historical value. Among their various treasures, which are mostly made of silver, are such items as chalices, patens, altar cards, reliquaries and processional crosses. Their vestments, which are predominantly silk, include copes, chasubles, stoles and maniples, delicately embroidered and decorated with ribbons and braids, all of which are an integral part of the daily liturgical life of the church and many of which date back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

    This enormous patrimony, which the Superintendency of Fine Arts has now defined as “endangered,” has never before been photographed or catalogued in its entirety. In fact, these artifacts traditionally have been considered of minor importance when compared to the great works of art contained in Venice. Sadly, but not surprisingly, they have most often attracted the attention of antiques dealers rather than art historians!

    In many cases, the church sacristies, where these items are generally stored, are not the most appropriate places for assuring their ultimate safety and proper maintenance. Environmental conditions such as high levels of humidity, wood-eating insects and dust are threatening the existence of many of these artifacts, particularly the delicate fabrics of which the vestments are made.

    Thanks to a generous grant from Save Venice Inc., we have been able to begin an inventory which has long been contemplated by Dr. Giovanna Nepi Sciré, the Superintendent of Fine Arts. Under the supervision of Dr. Fiorella Spadavecchia, in charge of fabric conservation for the Superintendency, 1057 silver objects and approximately 1000 different vestments have been photographed and catalogued during the period from October of 1992 to May of 1993.

    Two young research assistants, Alessandra Pranovi, a silver specialist, and Carla Falcone, an expert in church vestments, have been conducting this inventory using a new computer program designed by the Ministry of Fine Arts in Rome to substitute for the traditional manual cataloguing of works of art. After each object is photographed by Dino Zanella and Fernando Quaglia from the Superintendency’s own laboratory, it is then measured, labeled and described in detail in terms of its specific characteristics as well as its actual state of conservation.

    Our project included the churches of Santa Maria Assunta dei Frari, Santi Giovanni e Paolo, San Trovaso, San Pantalon, La Madonna dell’Orto, Santa Maria dei Carmini, San Giovanni in Bragora, San Zaccaria, La Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, San Salvador, Angelo Raffaele, Santa Maria Formosa and San Nicolò da Tolentino.

    For our catalogue of textiles, we began at San Salvador, because both the sacristy and its storage units containing the church vestments were in the process of being restored. At that time, we found that these items had been stored in a most haphazard fashion and were in some cases in serious need of repair. Due to the large number of artifacts located in the sacristies of the Frari and Angelo Raffaele (more than 500 items in the former, and over 200 in the latter, where many objects were also found to be in a particularly poor state of conservation), we next inventoried these churches in detail.

    From the earliest stages of the project, it was clear that the diverse types of objects to be surveyed would require different methodologies and approaches. For example, for the many silver artifacts which represent a greater safety risk, but are in good physical condition, we found it sufficient to photograph them, making note of any trademarks, and then to proceed with a computerized recording of their various characteristics.

    In the case of the textiles, however, it was immediately obvious that, at the same time as we were cataloguing these pieces and describing their individual characteristics in terms of their various weaves, fabrics and decorations, we should also be concerning ourselves with ascertaining and recording their various states of conservation. This realization led to a collaborative restoration effort with the prestigious German National Museum of Nuremberg.

    Thanks to the interest and concern of the Museum’s director, two German restorers, in conjunction with our current inventory, are participating in a major textile conservation project. Under the supervision of Prof. Frattaroli, a recognized expert in the field, Sabine Martius, who is employed at the Nuremberg Museum, and Sabine Phillips, an outside consultant, have been working with Carla Falcone, a young research assistant hired by the Superintendency. Prof. Frattaroli has not only provided invaluable guidance, but has also designed a program to analyze and categorize the various fabrics which will be sent to the Central Cataloguing Institute in Rome for use on a national scale. She has also created a glossary of terms which have evolved from the work of this highly specialized team.

    In addition to the actual inventory, we have worked at improving current storage facilities in the sacristies by testing drawers, cabinets and closets to ascertain the health of their wood, removing nails and other protruding objects, and substituting acid paper with material that is Ph neutral. We have also divided the vestments, which are now folded correctly, into those that are used and those that are not used and have separated them by color and liturgical function.

    Throughout the various stages of this project, we have benefited from the support of the ecclesiastical authorities, who have welcomed this initiative with enthusiasm and in a spirit of total cooperation. By means of the curia office, the parish priests have received from the Superintendency a list of suggestions and instructions intended to assist them in taking better care of these unique and irreplaceable objects and vestments.

    From the conception of the project through its actual execution, we have enjoyed the encouragement and financial assistance of Save Venice, and in particular their representatives here in Venice, Wolfgang Wolters and Lesa Marcello. For their continued interest in promoting research that seeks to further the cause of restoration and conservation, we at the Superintendency of Fine Arts are especially grateful.

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    • Pordenone’s Saints Martin and Christopher: a Difficult Restoration for a Difficult Artist

    W. R. Rearick

    W. R. Rearick

    Excerpted from Studies in Venetian Art and Conservation, 2001

     

    When Pordenone burst upon the Venetian artistic scene in the late summer of 1527, his explosive style shook the establishment in the Serenissimain ways that were altogether unexpected. Taking his professional name from his native town in the Friuli region north of Venice, Giovanni Antonio de’Sacchis had by then already established a strong reputation as what was then called “pictor modernus” (a painter in the modern style). He was the founder of a flourishing artistic tradition in his native region and was well known as far afield as Treviso and even Cremona, where, between 1520 and 1524, he left a striking cycle of frescoes in the cathedral. Even so, until that summer he had not dared to throw down the gauntlet in Venice itself.

    Since about 1500 Venice had enjoyed an idyllic quarter century of sumptuously sensual painting, beginning with the pastoral poetry of Giorgione, and under Titian’s dynamic leadership after 1510. In the wake of Giorgione’s idealized abstraction, Titian’s vivid evocation of a pictorial world in which nature formed the inspiration for a tactile sensuality was perfectly calibrated to please the materialistic mercantile culture that had brought prosperity and cultural expansiveness to the SerenissimaVenetian Republic.

    Pordenone was about seven years older than Titian, and for a generation he had dominated painting in the Friuli. There he had developed, largely on his own initiative, a powerfully robust approach to form and color, especially in the medium of fresco. This technique was not as developed in Venice due to the deleterious effect of the saline climate on external mural decorations. This energetic young artist from the provinces must have cast an envious eye on the munificent patronage that had made of Titian an international symbol of sumptuous success.

    When he made his move, Pordenone characteristically began at the top. The Confraternity of Saint Peter Martyr had opened a competition in 1525 for a monumental new altarpiece to be installed in the soaring gothic space of the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Titian, together with his opulent artistic follower, Palma il Vecchio, and others of the Venetian establishment, submitted modelliin which the scene of martyrdom was evoked with a dramatic flair that was at once awesome and reassuringly melodramatic. Pordenone’s entry into the competition presented the patrons with a design (Florence, Uffizi, gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, no. 725 E) that must have shocked the Confraternity. Its minutely finished detail was transfixed by a repellant lunar flash of white light that created a nightmare atmosphere of cold blooded murder. It had the lurid bluntness of a tabloid news shot with none of the humane, golden warmth of sentiment that Venetians expected of such subjects. Predictably, the Confraternity rejected his terrifying vision and awarded the commission to Titian instead (the masterful canvas he produced unfortunately burned in an 1867 fire).

    The aggressive Friulian painter was not to be so easily put off, and within a year he was back to answer the call for an artist to fresco the interior of the recently completed Venetian church of San Rocco. This time his long success in a medium only rarely practiced by Titian won the day, and his cycle of frescoes there was widely admired, most particularly for the acrobatic projection of monumental figures in illusionistic space in the dome and upper reaches of the church interior. When the sea air corroded the wall surface, the decision was made to replace the frescoes, and today only two minor fragments of putti that flank the high altar survive from this ensemble.

    Doubtless in the immediate wake of his success there, the patrons of the church of San Rocco awarded Pordenone another commission, this time for a project different from anything that he had thus far undertaken. The church had accumulated a sizable collection of precious works such as liturgical objects, reliquaries, ex votosand other pieces that were largely made of silver. These were of sufficient value that they required a secure place for storage when not in actual liturgical use. Hence the project to design and embellish a large wall cabinet, known as the armadio degli argenti.

    When the main body of the church of San Rocco was rebuilt by the architect Scalfarotto in the seventeenth century, Pordenone’s silver cabinet had long since been removed from its original placement, and its paintings had been installed high above head level on the left wall of the new structure, where they remain today. We have, therefore, no firm evidence of their original location in the church. Their compositions indicate that these panels and frescoes were intended to be seen from a notably low vantage point and to be approached from the left. This is approximately the same angulation from which one approaches them today; on the left upon entering the church and at a height of about five meters from the floor.

    As the church space is currently configured, this position is anomalous since the silver cabinet would have been quite inaccessible at such a height except by way of a ladder, an unlikely solution in the Cinquecento. However, virtually all medieval churches had a rood screen (in Venice called a barco) or one story division that usually crossed the middle of the nave at about its mid-point. This division separated the area open to the public from that reserved for the clergy and the friars. The rood screen was removed from most churches following the decision of the council of Trent to unite church space and open participation in services to the lay worshipper, in the late Cinquecento or later. In Venice, the barcohas survived only in two cases: San Michele in Isola and Sant’Andrea della Zirada. In another significant ecclesiastical interior that escaped this purge of the barco, that of the contemporary church dedicated to the same Saint, San Rocco in Vicenza, this structure consisted of an arcade with a vaulted chapel area below.

    At San Rocco in Venice this barcowould have crossed the nave at just the point where we suppose the silver cabinet to have stood, a position described in the early accounts as a mezza la chiesa(across the middle of the church). It would, therefore, have supported an upper floor or terrace that would have been a bit more than five and a half meters deep. This upper level would have accommodated perfectly the armadio degli argentiat the side against the left wall of the church. If Pordenone’s decorations were then as now in this position, the silver depository would have been easily accessible by internal stairs to the terrace, a space perhaps intended to serve the singers and musicians regularly employed at San Rocco. Evidence for the original placement of the silver cabinet is, however, complicated by the fact that as early as about 1575 the old barcowould have been removed, the armadiodismembered, the frescoes detached, and the entire ensemble launched onto peregrinations that did not bring them to their present location until after 1729. A generation after Pordenone’s project, a second silver cabinet was installed against the opposite wall as a pendant, a position Tintoretto’s covering doors still occupy today. In any case, a placement of these cabinets on the upper level of the barcoseems to be the only logical solution to this conundrum.

    Pordenone conceived his ensemble in the mixed medium: fresco for the lateral mural segments depicting the poor, the sick, and the suffering, and earth pigments in an oil binder on larch wood for the two central panels. The latter were hinged, with space on the backs for locks so that they formed cupboard doors. Behind these, a repository was excavated into the wall, providing a shelved area in which the silver was stored. Although it has sometimes been doubted that the frescoes flanked the Saints (they were detached in 1725 and set into the opposite wall next to the Tintoretto Pool of Bethesda, only to be returned in the nineteenth century to their original positions), the architecture in all four of Pordenone’s segments is continuous and confirms that this was their original disposition.

    The motley band of beseeching pilgrims in these frescoes is freely but clearly inspired by the analogous figures in Raphael’s Saint Peter Healingtapestry design, doubtless by way of prints. That they are pilgrims directed to the shrine of Saint Roch is underscored by the ship moored at left and the direction of the travelers’ attention – the high altar of the church beyond the right side of the fresco field. Pordenone’s unsuccessful attempt to bridge the gap between the Christopherpanel and the right fresco by the insertion of a dog is evidence that he did not pause long enough to integrate the lateral scenes with those of the two Saints.

    On the left wooden door Pordenone depicted Saint Martin and the Beggar, the legendary moment of charity in which the cavalier slices his cloak in half to give part of it to the shivering beggar. Commended for his generosity by a vision of Christ, Martin converted to Christianity. On the right door Pordenone painted Saint Christopher at the moment when this giant consented to carry a tiny child across a river. At mid-stream, Christopher discovered that the infant had become an exorbitant burden. Looking upward to his minute passenger, he asked the reason for this invisible weight and was told that the baby was the infant Christ who carried the burden of all of mankind’s sins on hisshoulders. Christopher became, therefore, the patron Saint of travelers.

    By the sixteenth century relics of both Martin and Christopher were revered in the church of San Rocco, and it had become a mecca for pilgrims. The Gran Guardiano of the Scuola Grande needed funds to build the ambitious new confraternity hall across the square, and he viewed the influx of generous pilgrims as a source of funding. They venerated, as well, the Christ Carrying the Cross(Venice, Scuola Grande di San Rocco). Titian had painted this canvas, which was kept in the first chapel to the left of the choir of the church, less than twenty years earlier. More recently, the master from Cadore had been commissioned to create a monumental woodcut of Saint Rochthat was aimed specifically at the pilgrim trade. Titian was very much at home in this context, sufficiently so that he offered shortly 21 September, 1553, to paint a large canvas for the Scuola Grande that was then about half completed. Titian’s proposal was probably aimed at the commission for the monumental Crucifixion, a project destined later to go to Tintoretto.

    In 1526 the plan for a new silver cabinet opened the way for Pordenone to prove that he had something new and different to offer Venetian patrons, and to demonstrate his potential by showing it off right in the enemy camp. All of this frenetic and ambitious activity at San Rocco must have presented an inviting prospect of future work for the rustic but ambitious Friulian painter.

    Titian had become aware of the heroic expressive potential of the human body when, in 1520, he painted the Saint Sebastian(Brescia, SS. Nazzaro e Celso) under the influence of drawings by or after Michelangelo. His goal was not the heroic abstraction of the Neoplatonic Florentine, but rather a naturalistic style dedicated to an optical tonalism in which his pictorial evocation of light and atmosphere transmute the classical figure into an expressive image of a deeply human feeling. Pordenone’s own relationship to the stylistic priorities of artists of this moment in Rome is still the subject of discussion, but despite the existence of a fresco altarpiece at Alviano not far north of the Papal city he was never a romanista. Rather, he began and would remain a hybrid of many currents, all brought firmly into line with his native independence of mind to form an essentially personal approach that was destined to set him apart from any artistic environment in which he might find himself. Indeed, when the doors of the silver cabinet were complete and in place, sophisticated Venetian connoisseurs of bella pitturacannot have missed the message: here was a strong, even violent challenge to all they esteemed in the pictures by their own artists, and most particularly in their dominant figure, Titian.

    Approaching the ensemble from low on the left, the visitor at San Rocco looked upward to an illusionistic architectural loggia against a neutral blue sky, a format derived by way of engravings from Raphael’s tapestry cartoon Saint Peter Heals the Lame Man (London, Victoria & Albert Museum). In this box space the giant figures of the saints plunge forward into our space with a massive presence that can only be described as threatening. Astride his monumental white war horse, Martin turns on a sharp diagonal to slice his mantle. His disdainful thrust is more appropriate to a vanquished adversary than to the quivering beggar barely seen behind the horse’s flank. His steed’s forward thrust pushes Christopher off balance to the right, with a spiral torsion that emphasizes the giant’s ungainly anatomy, which is anything but harmoniously classical in its rude candor. Christopher gazes terrorized at the hortatory infant on his back and in a movement of flight seems about to stride into empty space above our heads.

    The coarse power of Pordenone’s aggressive figures is not merely formal, it is pictorial as well. Tracts of strong color, blood red and gold, are flat and heatless in a matte-surfaced brusque application utterly devoid of the pleasurably tactile texture that radiates light in Titian’s canvases. Chiaroscuro is abrupt and abstracting, a harsh division of black and white in the horse that lends it a fixed immobility in contradiction of the forward impulse of its movement. In their rolling wake, the pathetic laments of the sick and the dying in the flanking frescoes are an expression of anguished terror rather than gratitude, hardly an image to reassure a tired pilgrim seeking a cure from some gnawing malady. In short, Pordenone’s ferocious assault on the Venetian establishment was clearly intended to épater les bourgeois. No written record survives to document the Venetian reaction to this shocking challenge to all that they held in esteem in painting, but it cannot be denied that here Pordenone threw down the gauntlet to the complacent hedonist aspect of Venetian painting, and artists of a younger generation who chafed against the restraints of their tradition were quick to acknowledge Pordenone’s leadership in their rebellion against the status quo.

    Unruly youngsters were not alone in feeling the impact of Pordenone’s uncouth foray into la Serenissima.Challenged though he clearly was, Titian as ever reacted with analytical intelligence to this unforeseen irritant. He never wavered in his devotion to an ideal of bella pittura, but his curiosity about new and adventuresome developments in form found an avenue of access to Pordenone’s dramatic images by way of the Friulian artist’s drawings. Equally original in this medium, Pordenone left us two quite different studies for the silver cabinet doors. One, Saint Martin(Chantilly, Musée Condé, no. II. 118), is a complete study for the painting, differing only in certain details such as the angle of the head and the drapery. It remains, however, more directly naturalistic than the more dramatized form of the painting. Its medium is red chalk, a material used regularly by Pordenone in his sketches but almost never employed by Venetian draftsmen.

    Titian was not seduced by the luminous effect of red chalk, but when, a decade later, he prepared to paint the Battle of Spoleto(lost, formerly in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, Palazzo Ducale) his sketch of a cavalier on a rearing horse (Munich, Graphisches Sammlung, no. 2981) clearly shows his interest in the potential power of the rearing horse, as Pordenone had so dramatically sketched it on the Chantilly folio. Red chalk was not the only exotic medium demonstrated here by Pordenone: his study for Saint Christopher(New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 60.135) introduced into the Venetian context the chiaroscuro technique of pen and bistre wash heightened with white body color on blue paper. Its pictorial potential is clear, and although Titian himself never used this medium, his younger colleagues such as Giuseppe Porta and Paolo Veronese did.

    The Metropolitan Museum sheet also illustrates the calculation with which Pordenone calibrated his apparently spontaneous effects. The figure already drawn, Pordenone squared it in black chalk for transfer to the painted panel, but then he realized that the lurching movement that he wanted for Christopher required a more diagonal tilt to our right. Therefore, he squared it a second time, rotating the angle clockwise. Having second thoughts, he opted for the more stable first position and used his initial squaring for the final painting. These drawings in red chalk and those in chiaroscuro were a novelty to Venetian artists, who largely ignored the former and transformed the latter into a loosely painterly medium. Pordenone himself was destined to mellow into a more Venetian technique, adopting black and white chalk in drawings datable to 1537.

    Significantly, among Pordenone’s junior onlookers there was a future pupil of Titian himself, a working-class youth who would quit the master’s studio in disgust over what he regarded as exploitative lack of proper training. Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto, was only ten years old when he saw Pordenone’s paintings in San Rocco. But their liberating energy and disruptive independence must already have struck a receptive chord in his rebellious temperament. For a decade he strove to absorb Pordenone’s terribilità with sufficient success that, when the older Friulian master died in Ferrara in 1539, allegedly the victim of poison administered by an envious colleague, Tintoretto had just made his professional debut as his artistic heir in Venice.

    The volcanic youngster did not, of course, know that twenty years later, in 1559, he would be commissioned to paint, this time on canvas rather than panel, the cupboard doors of a second silver cabinet for the church of San Rocco. It would be placed on the opposite, right hand wall of the nave, on the terrace of the barco. Its subject, Christ Healing the Sick at the Pool of Bethesda(in situ), adapted Pordenone’s architectural format and employed contrasts of movement in what was clearly a still enthusiastic homage to one of his germinal influences as a beginner: the Pordenone silver cabinet.

    Pordenone, a difficult artist, unconsciously created conditions of especial difficulty for the modern picture conservator. Perhaps concerned that a canvas support would be too vulnerable for cupboard doors destined to swing open and slam shut over many years of use, he decided to paint the lateral episodes of the supplicants in the medium he knew best, fresco. But for the moveable depictions of the Saints he used heavy planks of larch to create a backing support made up of horizontal pieces attached with butterfly wedges and many large, hand-forged nails. Over this he attached vertical sheathing, also in larch, with three thin sheets to each of the two doors. This layering of wood firmly fastened together might not have proven so dangerous in his native town at the foothills of the Dolomites, but in the humidity and abrupt climatic changes of Venice, shrinking and expansion occurred in different directions and to different degrees right from the beginning.

    Before 1999 no restorer had felt competent to confront this problem. When Save Venice sponsored their restoration and the doors were moved to the studio of Valter and Valentina Piovan at Sant’Apollonia, it was immediately evident that Pordenone’s paintings had already suffered scattered losses of paint surface through the expansion and contraction of its panels. Even more seriously, they were destined to disintegrate at an ever-accelerating rate if drastic steps were not taken at once. Under the direction of Adriana Augusti of the Superintendency of Fine Arts for Venice and with the consultation of outside experts it was decided that the doors could be saved without destroying the backing planks that were, after all, part of the original structure. This stabilizing treatment complete, the conservators could proceed to clean and remove overpainting from the surface. Although the vertical strips of losses were pervasive in both panels, in no area had form been rendered incomprehensible.

    Finally, with layers of grime, discolored varnish, and extensive overpainting carefully removed, the Piovan team could tone in the missing passages with the strong, clear colors of the original to return Pordenone’s startling paintings to something very close to their original effect. The lateral frescoes, detached at an early date but immured very close to their original positions high on the left wall of the nave, did not require another detachment. However, their restoration was delayed for a year by the necessity of waiting until seasonal conditions made work in the unheated church possible. Although it will be complete by the time this essay is in print, it has been necessary to reproduce them here prior to the beginning of the restoration.

    Pordenone’s first, disruptive efforts to establish an alternative to Titian’s stylistic supremacy in Venice made him a difficult artist for his contemporaries; the technical challenge presented by his working materials has rendered him equally difficult for the modern conservator. Fortunately, the combined efforts of all involved in this project have allowed us once again to participate in the dramatic ebb and flow of competitive artistic temperaments in this transitional moment for Venetian art.

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    • Pilot Projects in Restoration: The Role of Save Venice

    Wolfgang Wolters

    Wolfgang Wolters, Professor of Art History, Technical University of Berlin

    Excerpted from the 1989 Save Venice Journal

     

    For many years the Save Venice committee, together with the Superintendents of Fine Arts and Monuments, had as a matter of policy both initiated and implemented different pilot projects in buildings in Venice. These experimental restorations have had a considerable impact on the research and development of preservation techniques in this city.

    Helmut Reichwald, the director of the Department of Conservation in Stuttgart, carried out an investigation of the plaster and painting decorations in more than thirty rooms of Palazzo Grimani near the Church of Santa Maria Formosa. He documented the sequence of the colored layers on the walls and ceilings which had been applied from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries. He discovered previously unknown paintings while at the same time gathering the necessary preliminary information to begin the actual restoration of the rooms. The results of this research were so important for the study of the history of Venetian art that they were announced to the public during an international symposium on Palazzo Grimani.

    The generosity of Save Venice’s donors has also enabled the Venetian authorities to make an inventory of the fragments of painted façade decorations on Venetian houses and palaces which still remain today. Once Venice was a city alive with color, but environmental factors have caused so great a loss of pigment that unfortunately only fragments remain to let us know how the city must once have looked. Never before had these fragments been documented.

    An initial catalogue with photographic documentation of these colored remnants of Venetian buildings was created under the supervision of Mario Piana with the assistance of Emanuele Armani, whose stay in Venice and training under the direction of Helmut Reichwald, Save Venice made possible. This inventory is of great interest not only to art historians but also to everyone involved in the protection and restoration of other yet unknown fragments. The remaining outlines of the fifteenth-century paintings on the façade of the Palazzo Contarini, often called the “Palace of Desdemona” on the Grand Canal were one of the first examples to benefit from the results of this research.

    In the beautiful Renaissance Church of San Giobbe, Save Venice funded the technical preparations for restoring the precious pilasters carved by Pietro Lombardo in the choir and apses. While studying these carvings, architect Mario Piana developed plans for the desalination in special baths of the church’s marble slabs. If this method is found to be as effective as the Superintendency of Monuments hopes – and all tests are most encouraging – it can be used in numerous monuments throughout Venice. Save Venice reported in our last newsletter on the pilot studies which are presently being undertaken in the Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. For further information on this important project, please read the technical report on the Miracoli prepared by supervisory architect Mario Piana in this journal. Here also, our committee has funded the instrumentation which the Superintendent of Monuments is using to perform the technical studies for this extremely complex restoration.

    In cooperation with Professor Ennio Concina and a group of archivists, Save Venice devised and financed the task – begun by the Venetian office of UNESCO under the direction of Maria Teresa Rubin de Cervin – of creating an inventory of Venetian buildings. This unique project is of great international interest, and has been taken over by the Venetian Superintendency of Monuments which will assume the financial responsibility for completing the study, incorporating the results compiled to date. Up until today only a small portion of Venetian buildings have been officially designated as historic monuments thus coming under the protection of the Superintendency. This research project makes it possible for the Superintendency of Monuments to respond to the challenge – unfortunately still not met – of using the vincolo globale designation to declare the whole city a world historic monument.

    The seed money provided by the board of Save Venice for these and other vital research projects has been of great importance to the development of new preservation techniques, and its effect has extended well beyond the funds actually spent. Through close cooperation with the Venetian authorities, our committee looks forward to continuing to fund not only the restoration of great masterpieces, but also of lesser known and equally valid works of art which make up Venice’s unique cultural heritage. Perhaps most critical of all, will be our support of future pilot studies which will help to advance the science of restoration.

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    • St. Nicholas of Bari in Glory with Saints John the Baptist and Lucy by Lorenzo Lotto

    Everett Fahy

    Everett Fahy,  John Pope-Hennessy Chairman, Department of European Paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art

    Excerpted from the 1991 Save Venice Journal

     

    Off the tourist’s beat, in the church of S. Maria dei Carmini in the picturesque Campo Santa Margherita behind Palazzo Rezzonico on the Dorsoduro, stands a dazzling example of the art of Lorenzo Lotto. It is, in Bernard Berenson’s words, “one of Lotto’s greatest achievements.” Writing in 1901, Berenson deplored the neglected condition of the picture. “The landscape must have been one of the most captivating in Italian painting, and even now, although it is coated with candle-grease, the sweep of its outlines, the harmony of its colors, and the suggestiveness of its lights make an unwonted appeal to the imagination.” Happily, Berenson lived long enough to see the painting cleaned for the great exhibition of Lotto’s work in 1953. But since then the varnish had darkened again and some paint was peeling, so Save Venice funded its restoration last winter with a gift of $16,000 from the Ryan Foundation.

    Seated on a bank of clouds high above a bird’s-eye view of a river landscape, Nicholas of Bari – the patron saint of sailors – makes the sign of benediction and raises his eyes heavenward. Agitated angels pull back the cloak of his pallium and hold his traditional attributes: the crosier, mitre and a platter of three gold balls. The latter allude to the legend that he threw purses of gold into the house of three poor maidens to serve as their dowries. In Holland and Germany, his feast on December 6 is a holiday for children, and English colonists in New York adopted him as Father Christmas, changing his name in Dutch – Sinte Klaas– to Santa Claus.

    At Nicholas’s feet sit the nearly nude Saint John the Baptist and the sumptuously clad Saint Lucy. She is identified by the bowl resting near her left foot. It contains two eyes, an allusion to her name, which signifies light. The tiny warrior on horseback in the landscape is Saint George, a favorite saint of Venice. He fights a dragon with his lance and thus saves a princess who was to be the beast’s next victim.

    Lorenzo Lotto is known as one of the most enigmatic and fascinating artists of the Italian Renaissance. In his lifetime, he was obscured by, and for 300 years after his death, all but lost in the shadow of Titian. His rediscovery in the nineteenth century has led to a debate among scholars about his independent personality, his unsettled way of life, his origins, and the psychological meaning of his work.

    Lotto was born in Venice about 1480, and nothing is known of his early life and training. Vasari suggested that he might have been a pupil of Giovanni Bellini or even self-taught. The first documented record of his work is in Treviso from 1503-1506. Though working in the provinces, he shows a clear dependence on his Venetian contemporaries, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione and Alvise Vivarini. At the same time, Lotto’s style has a heavier, more expressive quality than the works of his Venetian colleagues – evoking the art of Dürer, who visited Venice in 1506.

    In 1509, Lotto joined Raphael in the Vatican where his native, largely self-taught talent was influenced by Roman classicism. In 1513, his work took him to Bergamo, not far from Milan, where he must have been influenced by Leonardo and Bramante. By 1521, Lotto had assimilated many of the elements of contemporary classicism, and his work blended a primitive sincerity with newly learned sophistication. Then Lotto’s work once again changed direction, moving towards the innovative Mannerism of Parmigianino and Pordenone, then coming into vogue in Central and Northern Italy. In 1525, at the age of 45, Lotto returned to Venice, feeling himself sufficiently established to challenge Titian, who at only 35 was at the height of his powers. This was the year Titian completed the great Pesaro altarpiece (SV restoration 1977-78), and eight years after he had painted the splendid Assumption of the Virgin(SV restoration 1975), both in the Frari. Eclipsed by such towering genius, Lotto was forced again to look to the provinces for work.

    St. Nicholas of Bari in Gloryis the first commission Lotto received from a Venetian church. In an attempt to establish a foothold in the city, he mutes his emotional pathos and paints a more conventional work, conforming to the prevailing taste established by Titian. He softens his precise drawing and demonstrates what Berenson called a “Titianesque subtlety in the juxtaposition and fusion of colors,” which he achieved by warming up his cool “mannerist” turquoises and greys, adopting instead the rich glowing tones of scarlet, green, heliotrope and delicate white that made up the Venetian palette. The most interesting portion of the painting is the almost Dutch-style landscape which occupies the lower third, existing quite separately from the upper portion. In the center is a picturesque gulf perhaps reminiscent of the seaside around Ancona where Lotto spent several years. On the left side of the picture, now calm after the storm, there are two trees, one green and one bare, while on the right, a third tree is buffeted by strong winds. On the left, the countryside is alive with pilgrims, and mule drivers who wend their way down a hill to a distant city. In the contrast between the luminous quiet on the left and the tempestaon the right, there is a strong link to the landscapes of Titian and especially Giorgione.

    Superintendent of Fine Arts, Giovanna Nepi-Scirè, reports that unfortunately it is this lovely landscape which has suffered the most damage. Originally the canvas’s frame and stretcher separated it from the humid walls of the church, thus protecting it from the rising damp and salts found in Venetian structures. Over the years, fragments of brick and stone had fallen off the wall and collected behind the painting, permitting water to penetrate the canvas by means of capillary action. This damp caused the paint itself to pulverize, destroying several centimeters of the picture’s surface.

    Prior to transferring the altarpiece to the restoration laboratory in the former abbey of San Gregorio, master restorer, Ferruccio Volpin, consolidated the damaged lower portion through the application of a paper facing to prevent additional loss of paint. Later on in the laboratory, technicians affixed more rice paper to the paint surface to give further protection and removed the previous relining. They then desalinized the canvas by applying compresses of distilled water, repeating the process until all the salts were dissolved. Once this damage was eliminated, the painting could be relined with a double layer of fine linen and cleaned. With great care, Volpin lifted the old, oxidized layers of varnish and filled in the gaps in the canvas with layers of gesso and water-soluble paint. Finally several new layers of varnish were applied, and the finished altarpiece stretched over a new, worm-proof frame.

    As soon as the roof of the church and the altar itself are refurbished, this great Lotto will return to its original location in the nave of S. Maria dei Carmini, its colors and contours once again brilliant. All who have seen it since its restoration now understand why Dolce, a jealous member of Titian’s circle, felt impelled to denigrate Lotto and the Carmini altarpiece, calling it “a lost, fantastic and romantic creation.” Through the generosity of the Ryan Foundation and the skill of Volpin, it will now resume its rightful place among the masterpieces of Venetian painting.

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    • 1997 St. John the Baptist by Giovanni Maria Mosca in Santo Stefano

    Wendy Stedman Sheard

    Excerpted from the 1997 Save Venice JournalExcerpted from the 1997 Save Venice Journal

     

    In the newsletter of Autumn 1996, we described the brilliantly successful and technically extremely difficult restoration by Toto Bergamo of a 32.6 inches high St. John the Baptist, attributed to Tullio Lombardo. Subsequently it was realized that the statue is the same one described in the famous guidebook by Giulio Lorenzetti as a small work by Giovanni Maria Mosca (active 1507-73) on a holy water basin.

    It is instructive to compare Mosca’s St. John the Baptist to Pietro Lombardo’s St. Jerome, which is easy to do now that they are both located in the sacristy of Santo Stefano. St. Jerome’s center of gravity is located above the center of his circular base, his weight supported on his right leg with the left knee flexed, in a natural contrapposto.St. John the Baptist by contrast, though his engaged right leg rigidly bears his body’s weight, stands with his relaxed leg almost off the base entirely, and a line drawn through his body would not be vertical, but aslant. A sense of underlying agitation pervades the figure, as with his right hand he pours baptismal water from a shallow bowl, while with his left he secures the end of his cloak in a not completely legible gesture. Intensity of feeling is registered in a somewhat rhetorical vein, underlined by parted lips and tilted head. Features probably derived in the first instance from heads by Tullio Lombardo (even though Mosca was born in Padua and trained there, first by the Paduan sculptor Giovanni Minello and later by Bartolomeo Mantello and perhaps by the bronze founder Guido Aspetti). The sense of heightened emotion that Mosca strove for is also evident in the highly active, rather schematic patterning of thin ridges of folds that crisscross the Baptist’s body, which appear especially dramatic on his upper back. Mosca’s style demonstrates one direction that 16C sculpture in the Veneto-Paduan ambiance pursued before the arrival in Venice of Jacopo Sansovino.