Save Venice is seeking sponsors for Lazzaro Bastiani’s God the Father Blessing with Four Angels in the Church of Santa Maria Formosa.

*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.

Depicting God the Father Blessing with Four Angels, this panel is believed to have formed the cover of a 15th-century cassa, or chest, possibly used to store liturgical objects or vestments. It belonged to the Scuola dei Casselleri, the lay confraternity of chest makers, originally placed under the protection of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and traditionally regarded as the oldest confraternity in Venice.

The Scuola claimed a foundation date of 933 and reportedly counted more than four hundred members by the 10th century. Its civic prominence was reflected in the privilege of an annual visit from the doge on the feast of the Purification, commemorating the aid the casselleri were said to have provided in 944, when Slavic pirates attempted to abduct a group of young Venetian women during the Festa delle Marie at San Pietro di Castello. Each year, the doge received a symbolic straw hat—the last, presented to Ludovico Manin in 1797, is still preserved at the Correr Museum—while twelve poor young women were provided with dowries.

The confraternity’s close ties to Venetian civic and devotional life were firmly rooted at Santa Maria Formosa. In 1510, the Scuola reached an agreement with the Chapter and was assigned the altar of Saint Joseph, to the right of the high altar, where it installed its own altarpiece. Its meeting house, wedged between the church and bell tower, was rebuilt in 1550 and restored in 1601. Damaged by lightning in the final years of the Republic, the premises were incorporated after the confraternity’s suppression into a new oratory dedicated to Santa Maria della Salute, begun in 1806 and completed in 1833. Traces of the former Scuola remain today: an inscription above the portal at no. 5264, a 15th-century relief of the Virgin and Child near the former secondary entrance, and, inside, a funerary stone and a relief of the Madonna della Misericordia.

The painted panel itself is now displayed above a service door in the first chapel on the right. At its center, the half-length figure of God the Father appears in the heavens, raising his right hand in blessing while extending his left downward, palm open. Together, the gestures suggest both benediction and bestowal, presenting God as the source of grace directed toward the realm below. Four angels flank him, two of whom, dressed in black, swing censers. Their presence gives the scene a distinctly liturgical character, evoking the heavenly liturgy in which incense signifies prayer rising before God and marks the divine presence. The dark garments further distinguish the censing angels and heighten the solemnity of their ceremonial role. If the panel originally covered a chest containing liturgical objects or vestments, image and function may have been closely intertwined: the contents would have rested, both literally and symbolically, beneath divine blessing and within the sacred atmosphere created by the angelic censing.

The panel has been attributed to the 15th-century painter Lazzaro Bastiani, or to an artist in his workshop, largely on stylistic grounds and particularly through comparison with the Saint Jerome Altarpiece in the Duomo of Asolo, generally dated to the late 1480s or early 1490s. Furthermore, an intriguing documentary clue appears in a 1632 inventory of the Scuola’s possessions, which records a painting of unspecified subject attributed to “Zambellino,” or Giovanni Bellini. Although an attribution of the present panel to Bellini is untenable, the reference may preserve an early memory of the work and is significant for placing it within the broader artistic tradition of Bellini and his school, one of the defining currents of early Renaissance Venetian painting. By the 17th century, its original function as part of a chest may already have been forgotten, and the panel valued instead as an independent devotional image. Its association with the Bellinian tradition also provides a meaningful context for the more convincing attribution to Bastiani, whose work developed in close dialogue with that visual language.

The painting is executed on a single wooden panel that originally served as a hinged lid, as indicated by three large iron hinges and square perforations along the upper edge. The lower portion shows extensive old woodworm damage, with large galleries probably caused by longhorn beetles, together with two horizontal splits on the reverse, only one of which has been filled. The iron fittings are heavily corroded. The paint surface is obscured by accumulated dust and dirt, while a thick, strongly yellowed varnish further compromises the original tonal and chromatic relationships.

Conservation will focus on confirming that the insect activity is inactive, stabilizing weakened areas of the support and the splits, assessing the corroded iron fittings, and carefully cleaning the surface. Particular attention will be given to the controlled removal of the discolored varnish, following appropriate testing, to recover the painting’s color balance and improve its overall legibility.

Lazzaro Bastiani (ca. 1429 – 1512) [attr.]
God the Father Blessing with Four Angels
End of the 15th century, oil on panel
151 x 38 cm

Gramigna, Silvia and Annalisa Perissa. Scuole di arti, mestieri e devozione a Venezia. Itinerari di storia e arte. Venice: Arsenale Cooperativa Editrice, 1999, pp. 43-44 no. 10/A

Tassini, Giuseppe. Curiosità veneziane. Ovvero origini delle denominazioni stradali di Venezia. Venice: Giovanni Cecchini, 1863, pp. 137-138

Vio, Gastone. Le Scuole Piccole nella Venezia dei Dogi. Note d’archivio per la storia delle confraternite veneziane. Costabissara (VI): Angelo Colla Editore, 2004, pp. 161-162 no. 111