Restored in 1999 with funding from Dr. and Mrs. Randolph H. Guthrie in memory of Save Venice founders Betty and John McAndrew.

In the late fifteenth century, the wealthy Badoer family commissioned a carved choir screen for the church of San Francesco della Vigna, as well as a high-relief altarpiece for their family chapel. Both of these projects were most likely executed by Pietro, Tullio, and Antonio Lombardo and their workshop, with the possible assistance of Giambattista Bregno. In 1534, Jacopo Sansovino was commissioned to rebuild the church. Agnesina Badoer Giustinian, the Badoer heir who had married into the Giustinian family, asked Sansovino to incorporate the earlier Lombardo sculptural reliefs into the new Badoer-Giustinian Chapel, located off the transept to the left of the presbytery.

For the altar in the new chapel, Sansovino re-inserted the carved altarpiece that depicts the patron saints of the Badoer family — Agnes, Michael, James, and Anthony — led by the namesake of Agnese’s father, Jerome. Saint Jerome holds a model of an early Renaissance church in his left hand and a copy of the Bible in his right, which he translated into Latin. The lion by his side alludes both to the animal that Saint Jerome had cured and to the emblematic beast of Venice itself, the lion of Saint Mark. Reliefs from the dismantled choir screen adorn the walls of the chapel, with carved inserts of angel heads from Sansovino’s workshop serving to adapt the reliefs to the new chapel space.

Save Venice has restored all four of what are considered the “great early Renaissance chapels” in Venice, as identified by Save Venice founder John McAndrew in his classic study, Venetian Architecture of the Early Renaissance. In addition to the Badoer Giustinian Chapel, these include the Martini Chapel in San Giobbe, the Gussoni Chapel in San Lio, and the Cornaro Chapel in Santi Apostoli

The sculptures of the chapel were restored by conservator Toto Bergamo and the Sansovino restoration firm, with the guidance of project director Sandro Sponza of the Superintendency of Fine Arts of Venice.

For select projects, conservation dossiers in Italian containing limited textual and photographic documentation may be available for consultation by appointment at the Venice office of Save Venice and the Rosand Library & Study Center. For inquiries, please contact us at venice@savevenice.org.

Pietro, Tullio, and Antonio Lombardo, the Lombardo workshop, Giambattista Bregno [attr.]; Jacopo Sansovino and the Sansovino workshop
Badoer Giustinian Chapel
c. 1500-1530, marble

Ralph Lieberman, “Some Family Chapels in Renaissance Venice” (2001)

McAndrew, John. Venetian Architecture of the Early Renaissance. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980.