Save Venice is seeking a sponsor for the conservation of Giulia Lama’s Madonna and Child with Saint Peter, St Magnus, and the Allegory of Venice.

*Published sponsorship costs are subject to change due to conservation plan modifications and fluctuations in exchange rates.

Please contact kim@savevenice.org today for more information and the latest cost estimates.

Giulia Lama was born in Venice on October 1, 1681, the eldest of five children. She resided in the sestiere of Castello, near Campo Santa Maria Formosa, her entire life. She remained close with her family, never marrying, and lived a mostly secluded existence. Her father Agostino was an artist, a pupil of Pietro Della Vecchia, and it is thought that she studied and worked with him until his death in 1714. After her death in 1747, she was buried in the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo.

Little attention was given to Giulia Lama’s life and career until 20th-century scholars Rodolfo Pallucchini and Ugo Ruggeri shed new light on the importance of her role in the development of Venetian painting during the first half of the 18th century as a bold painter with a refined intellect and reserved nature. In addition to her work as an artist, she was lauded for her poetry, embroidery, and scholarly pursuits, transcending the boundaries placed upon women during her lifetime. Lama’s artistic prowess was dismissed by her male contemporaries to the extent that in 1728 abbot Antonio Conti, an eclectic humanist and man of science, noted how “the poor girl is persecuted by painters, but her virtues triumph over her enemies.” According to Conti, Lama painted “better than Rosalba [Carriera], so far as large compositions are concerned,” and it is because of her large religious paintings that she is considered one of the most enigmatic and fascinating figures of the early Venetian Settecento.

While it was long assumed that Lama was a student of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1683-1754), the two were in fact close friends who clearly influenced each other through their work. Lama served as a model for some of his portraits, including one that dates to 1715-1720 in which she is shown as a painter at work with her palette and brushes in her hand. Many of Lama’s works from early in her career were once attributed to Piazzetta. Over 200 drawings reveal her as one of the first female artists to have regularly studied nude male and female models from life.

By the beginning of the 1720s, Lama received the prestigious commission for the high altarpiece from the church of Santa Maria Formosa, depicting the Madonna and Child with Saint Peter, St Magnus, and the Allegory of Venice. Shortly afterwards, in 1725, Lama completed paintings of the Four Evangelists for the spandrels above the two most important altars in the nave of the church of San Marziale. Her reputation in Venice also rests on the Crucifixion altarpiece for the church of San Vidal (San Vitale), painted between 1726-1732 and still in situ. Lama’s final great religious work in Venice, dating to circa 1736, is a canvas currently displayed on the right wall in the nave of the church of Santa Maria Assunta in Malamocco on the Lido Island.

This restoration will be undertaken through Save Venice’s  “Women Artists of Venice” (WAV) program to identify, restore, and recognize the overlooked accomplishments of historic women artists in Venice.

Giulia Lama was one of the few prominent female painters active in the first half of the eighteenth century. Unlike her fellow women artists, Lama produced largescale history paintings, a genre traditionally reserved for men. This remarkable altarpiece was most likely the first ecclesiastical commission Lama received. Significantly, the patron was Lama’s own parish church of Santa Maria Formosa, where she had been baptized. She spent her entire life in the immediate neighbourhood.

Usually dated to the early 1720s, the painting had been installed on the main altar of Santa Maria Formosa for about a decade when Anton Maria Zanetti mentioned it in his 1733 guidebook of Venice: “the main altarpiece with the Madonna and Two Saints is a work by Giulia Lama”. It was most probably removed after the church was severely damaged during the First World War and then rediscovered by Santa Maria Formosa’s parish priest Father Lino Bortolan in the early 1970s. It has been displayed in the apse behind the main altar of the church for the past five decades.

This altarpiece stands as a testament to Lama’s outstanding talent, and it is the only surviving work that is signed. Barely visible, in the bottom right of the canvas, she proudly asserts: “GIULIA LAMA PINXIT”. The confident composition is uniquely Venetian in its iconography, conveying the Serenissima’s civic devotion and reflecting an astute understanding of the city’s identity.

At the top of the painting, a tenderly embracing Virgin and Child are enthroned on billowing clouds. Directly below, Saint Peter is gripping a book, while an angel at his knees is clasping his keys. With his muscular right arm, Saint Peter is dramatically gesturing upwards towards the Virgin and Child, while he is gazing intently at Saint Magnus of Oderzo, depicted further below on the right of the canvas. Magnus is clad in his episcopal vestments, holding his bishop’s staff, and returning Peter’s gaze.

This scene shows the legendary foundation of the Church of Santa Maria Formosa: Saint Magnus’ revelatory vision of the Virgin Mary instructing him to build a church in her honor in a location she indicated with the appearance of a white cloud. The two putti above Saint Magnus are presenting the Virgin with the plans for the church. Santa Maria Formosa is one of eight churches believed to have been established by Saint Magnus across Venice in the seventh century.

Opposite Magnus and below Peter, Lama included a personified Venice, the allegorical figure of Venetia, in this composition. Adorned with pearls in her hair and around her neck, she is magnificent in a precious ermine-lined cloak draped over a golden, brocade dress. She is accompanied by the loyal lion of Saint Mark, whose presence strengthens her identity and authority.

Giulia Lama captures the dramatic moment of the foundation of her own parish church over a millennium prior in this intensely personal commission. Lama’s vision mirrors her civic pride and spiritual devotion in celebrating the divine favors poured on the city of Venice from its legendary origins.

The painting appears heavily obscured by aged varnish and overpainting from previous restoration efforts. The surface has sustained significant paint loss, particularly along the lower portion of the canvas, where losses were previously filled with a brownish tone that has since deteriorated. Particularly concerning is the lower portion of the canvas, which shows visible signs of mold damage—so extensive, in fact, that it partially conceals the artist’s original signature.

Giulia Lama (1681-1747)
Madonna and Child with Saint Peter, St Magnus, and the Allegory of Venice
early 1720s, oil on canvas
436 x 228 cm
Church of Santa Maria Formosa

Bortolan, Gino. Per una ‘più completa’ conoscenza di Giulia Lama. “Ateneo Veneto”, XI, 1973, pp. 183-189.

Gietz, Nora. A Woman Artist in Eighteenth-Century Venice: New Details about Giulia Lama’s Life (1681-1747). “Artibus et Historiae,” 89, XLV, 2024, pp. 225-246. Link to the article

Massimi, Maria Elena. Lama, Giulia. In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 63. Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 2004, pp. 112-114. Link to the article

Pallucchini, Rodolfo. Di una pittrice veneziana: Giulia Lama. “Rivista d’Arte”, XV, 1933, pp. 399-413

Pallucchini, Rodolfo, “Per la conoscenza di Giulia Lama. “Arte Veneta”, XXIV, 1970, pp. 161-172

Ruggeri, Ugo. Dipinti e disegni di Giulia Lama. Bergamo: Monumenta Bergamasca, 1973

Zanetti, Antonio Maria. Descrizione di tutte le pubbliche pitture della città di Venezia e isole circonvicine. Venice: Pietro Bassaglia, 1733.