The Scuola Grande San Giovanni Evangelista is a school in Venice, located in the San Polo district, near the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista. It is the school of the oldest foundation, among those still functioning in the city.
Founded in 1261, the Scuola San Giovanni Evangelista, one of the
richest and most prestigious in Venice, was a brotherhood of
"disciplined or flagellants", also known as Battuti, who united around
themselves the devotion to their patron saint, Saint John the
Evangelist. Initially its seat was in Sant'Aponal, in 1301 (or perhaps
in 1307) it moved, in the area of the parish of San Stin, to the church
of San Giovanni Evangelista founded by the rich Badoer family and
subjected to their patronage.
A few years later the Badoers built
a hospice for widows next to it, the upper floor of which they leased to
the Scuola in 1340. As recalled in the inscription under the bas-relief
placed outside the building, between 1349 and 1354 the brothers
restructured the rooms to adapt them to their needs.
In 1369 the
School had received as a gift from Philippe de Mézières, chancellor of
the kingdoms of Cyprus and Jerusalem, a fragment of the True Cross which
it had in turn received from the Latin patriarch of Constantinople,
Peter Thomas. The precious relic, object of an extraordinary veneration
due to the prodigies connected to it, soon became the most
characterizing and identifying element of prestige of the School.
In addition to the cross, the insignia of the Scuola always
remained, sometimes accompanied by the initials S Z, the eagle of Saint
John and the pastoral staff. The latter in memory of a legendary
episcopate of the evangelist in Ephesus. Symbols often synthesized in
the only pastoral adorned with an eagle's head on the tip of the curl.
The sign was usually placed on the Scuola's properties but, from 1571,
the brothers were allowed to display it on their own homes.
The
increased prestige of the School convinced the confreres to expand it
and agreed with the Badoer to build a new replacement hospital. They
occupied the entire building and adapted it in the years between
1414-1420. The latter date is ascertained by the fact that in the same
commissioned a first cycle of paintings to decorate the rooms, all a
century and a half later replaced by those known today. These were
stories from the Old and New Testaments by Jacopo Bellini The works to
date are lost or dispersed but someone has attempted to identify them in
a series of canvases painted in tempera with successive heavy
repaintings, but homogeneous in size and pertaining to the themes
recalled in the ancient guides, divided between the Galleria Sabauda in
Turin, the Stanley Moss collection in New York and other private
collections but coming from the Scottish collection of William Graham.
The Council of Ten had begun in 1467 to mark the differences between
the Venetian schools by defining the first four schools of battiti as
"scolae magnae" or "large schools" and the others, those that are
referred to today as "small schools", "scolae comunes".
This new
distinction led to the decision to embellish the venue with additional
works of art and architectural furnishings. Between 1478 and 1481 Pietro
Lombardo built the septum which acts as the entrance to the courtyard of
the Scuola. Subsequently (1498) it was decided to build a new access
stairway, entrusting the project to Mauro Codussi. And shortly before it
had also been decided to place a series of canvases on the miracles of
the relic of the Cross in Venice in the Great Hall of the confraternity,
to whose creation some of the main artists active in the city were
called between 1496 and 1501. Gentile Bellini painted three canvases,
two by Giovanni Mansueti, one by Vittore Carpaccio, one by Lazzaro
Bastiani and one by Benedetto Diana. A ninth had been painted by
Perugino, but has not been preserved; all the others are now kept in the
Gallerie dell'Accademia.
In the sixteenth century Titian also
intervened, painting the Vision of Saint John the Evangelist (now in the
National Gallery in Washington) for the ceiling of the Sala
dell'Albergo.
Between 1727 and 1762, another artist, Giorgio
Massari, was called upon to give the Sala Capitolare its current
appearance; in the same century Jacopo Guarana painted a Vision of the
seven angels and the seven vases for the school.
After five and a
half centuries of activity, following the Napoleonic decree of 1806, the
Scuola di San Giovanni was suppressed together with all the
confraternities and deprived of all its assets. Only the relic of the
cross was saved thanks to the interest of Giovanni Andrighetti, the last
Great Guardian.
Under the new Habsburg government it was thought
to demolish the buildings to build houses for speculative purposes and
someone had planned to dismantle the floor of the chapter house to
relocate it to some Austrian palace or church, but in 1830, the wealthy
entrepreneur Gaspare Biondetti Crovato began the negotiations to put the
complex back into the hands of a group of faithful. Only in 1855 was the
request accepted. The Pious Society for the Purchase of the Scuola
Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, set up for the purpose by 83
generous citizens, signed the deed of sale in January 1856 and, after
the first restorations, the Scuola was officially reopened on 27
December 1857.
In 1877 the properties were transferred to the
Guild of Mutual Aid Building Arts which in 1892 changed its name to
Society of Mutual Aid Building Arts in the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni
Evangelista. In 1929 this society in turn approved the full-fledged
reconstitution of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista. Two
years later, Pope Pius XI recognized the school as an archconfraternity.
The Scuola Grande complex is accessible through the portal of the
septum, which closes the small square onto which the façade with the
entrance looks.
The septum is the architectural element that gives
artistic importance to the exterior of the complex, impressing those
passing through the narrow Calle de l'Ogio with its Renaissance
sculptural decorations; centrally on the architraved structure is a
lunette with the carved symbols of the school: a large eagle (symbol of
the evangelist), perched on three books and surmounted by a cross.
To the right of the septum is the building, which is initially
structured on two floors in the building where the atrium is located,
and then later expands into the large three-storey building, where the
Sala Capitolare is located. On the rectangular entrance portal, in
addition to a central mask, there are two small bas-reliefs in the
corners of the architrave with friars kneeling in the act of praying,
while to the left of the entrance there is a large bas-relief with,
above, Madonna with Child and, framed below, the brothers of the Scuola
Grande gathered in prayer before the patron saint. The openings on the
noble floor are single lancet windows with pointed arches.
Sala Capitolare (or of San Giovanni)
Inside, the place of greatest
interest is the Sala Capitolare, a masterpiece by Massari: an
11-metre-high room, illuminated at the top by twelve large oval windows,
is decorated with polychrome marble surfaces, culminating in the altar
of San Giovanni Evangelista, where the Saint is represented, inspired by
an angel while he is in the act of writing his Gospel.
Many canvases
adorn the walls with the pictorial cycle Life of St. John the
Evangelist, while a large panel on the ceiling represents the
Apocalypse.
Oratory of the Cross
The oratory inside the Scuola
Grande is the place where the relic of the Holy Cross has been kept
since the fourteenth century, object of worship of the community over
the centuries, as well as inspiration for the large canvases by Bellini.
This environment was remodeled in the eighteenth century, in the wake of
the work on the Sala Capitolare, as well as being stripped of the
paintings by Bellini, transferred to the galleries of the Academy.
Other rooms
Many important rooms are located around the main hall
and on the ground floor; some notable ones are:
the Sala
dell'Albergo: this room is important because it retains its
sixteenth-century layout and is accompanied by four large canvases by
Palma il Giovane, painted between 1581 and 1582.
the Sala delle
Colonne: room that takes its name from five large stone columns; it
maintains the fifteenth-sixteenth-century features.
With the suppression of 1806, as also happened for the other schools,
numerous and important works and precious furnishings were confiscated.
Some were dispersed into the private market and others have found their
way to display or conservation in public collections.
The works
traceable today outside the School consist of a large part of the
ancient documents of the mariegole and some pictorial cycles.
To
these we can add at least the isolated panel (actually a polyptych
painted on a single panel without the original framing that divided it)
by Giovanni da Bologna, in the Gallerie dell'Accademia since 1818. It is
probably his oldest signed plate that has come down to us.
With the suppression, the precious mariegole of all schools, large or
small, were also dispersed in the antiques market. Fortunately a
conspicuous number was collected by Teodoro Correr and Emmanuele Cicogna
to then be poured into the collections of the Correr Museum and the
Marciana Library. Others, often already deprived of the most attractive
illuminated pages, already reached the current State Archives of Venice
during the Austrian period. Isolated pages variously decorated sometimes
emerge, even cropped, in collections open to the public. These were
precious parchment volumes which, when the statutes needed to be
rewritten, or were worn out by continuous use, were made to be copied by
skilled scribes and illuminators, perhaps trying to preserve the
illustrated pages. The quality of the writing in the copies and
integrations of the mariegole was considered a requirement and the
schools usually hired an external calligrapher for this task. Indeed,
the School of San Giovanni Evangelista had expressly imposed this use as
a rule and had recorded the notice in its mariegola of 1366:
«The
plenary chapter has also established and ordered that in this maria of
ours no one dares or causes anything to be written, in any manner or for
any reason, except by the hand of a good calligrapher, in large and
well-designed letters»
It remains rather mysterious from which
original volume the two precious illuminated sheets regularly acquired
by the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Musée Marmottan were detached. Of
the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista, there are still four incomplete
specimens in the State Archives of Venice showing changes to the statute
from the early 14th to the 15th century. The hypothesis remains probable
that the two folios belonged to a further version - completely lost in
the textual part - subsequent to the first version preserved in Venice.
The supposed datings are not particularly distant between the two
mariegole, but the dimensions of the full-page miniatures exclude the
provenance from the previous, smaller version. Although the white
margins of both miniatures have been cut away, the same dimensions of
the image (that of Cleveland 278 x 200 mm and that of Paris 280 x 200
mm) and also the stylistic setting closely relate the two works . Very
similar is the framing in bands with pseudo-Arabic characters
interrupted by small medallions and the representations with a Byzantine
taste but with already Gothic features. This suggests that the
miniatures are the result of a field very close to that of the Master of
the Washington Coronation, albeit with more vernacular details.
Particularly interesting in its rhetoric dedicated to the beaten is the
Deesis depicted in the Cleveland card: a representation of the heavenly
reward to disciplined brethren. A majestic Christ enthroned, escorted by
the swirling wings of red seraphim and accompanied by the witnesses Mary
and John (represented as an old man according to the School's customs),
welcomes the beaten ones. Some of these, grouped around the processional
cross, are cradled by two angels, others have already risen above their
little clouds. The confreres, who wear the white cape with the insignia
of the School, open on the back to show off the wounds from the
floggings, are already in the "heaven of heavens", higher than the
tubular angels and the firmament with the stars watching them from below
upward. Numerous applauding angels act as a cord and wing to the upper
part. In the central tondo at the top of the frame is the face of the
Eternal from whose beard the dove descends towards the head of Christ to
compose the Trinity.
The Marmottan miniature is the result of the
same rhetorical intentions. The flagellation of Christ is represented
within a markedly Gothic environment. At Jesus' feet, placed between the
two tormentors, two little brothers kneel in prayer, always with the
hood open on their shoulders.
Also of interest, also from a
documentary point of view, are two other illuminated sheets identified
by the American scholar Lyle Humphrey as coming from two of the
mariegole conserved in the State Archives: both represent the scene of
the swearing in of the new brothers in the cartoons at the bottom of the
page.
The miniature of the Cini Foundation belongs to a mariegola
of the Archive begun in 1366. It appears detached from the book in a
remote and indeterminate period but in any case of lawful origin: in
1939 Vittorio Cini bought it with part of the collection of Ulrico
Hoepli where it had arrived towards the end from the 1920s, from the
antiquarian Tammaro De Marinis. The connection with the version of the
mariegola in the Venetian archive begun between 1360 and 1369 is
demonstrated by the exact and corresponding continuation of the text on
the reverse of the parchment on the first written page of the surviving
book and on the one present, without interruption, on the ex Boston
folio.
«in honor of almighty god sir jesus christ and the blessed
virgin madonna saint mary of her mother of her and of the blessed
apostle and evangelist sir saint john »
The page format,
handwriting, spacing, and style of the filigree decorations also match;
moreover, a slight imprint of the miniatures remains on the reverse of
the opening page with the indexes in the bound book.
Instead, the
illuminated Boston page, thanks to Humphrey's studies, turned out to be
part of the sheets stolen from the State Archives between 1947 and 1949.
The original composition was well known thanks to the old publications
by Pompeo Gherardo Molmenti and Giulio Lorenzetti that they reproduced.
The investigations following the discovery convinced Homeland Security
Investigations to impose the seizure of this and another manuscript page
belonging to the mariegola of the Scuola Grande della Misericordia from
the same theft. For its part, the Boston Public Library voluntarily
relinquished possession of the manuscripts. Thus it was that these
pages, together with other finds of illicit origin, were returned to
Italy in 2017.
In both illustrations at the bottom of the page a
kneeling group of aspiring brothers swears their loyalty on the volume
of the mariegola brought by the degani of the school. They are all
arranged in front of an altar while a group of people assist, standing,
to the right of the scene. The differences are evident in the elegant
clothes of the defendants, especially for the wide hanging and hemmed
sleeves in the fourteenth-century one, according to the fashion of the
time and courteous taste in the other. In the older one, the altar
appears simpler and is decorated with a polyptych on two registers; in
the fifteenth-century one the table - less legible in the details - is
surmounted by an elaborate ciborium.
The framing of the page
appears relatively simpler in the Cini page enlivened by the initial of
«In nomine patris…» with a blessing Christ and in the opposite corner by
a small medallion with John intent on writing the Gospel under the
dictation of an angel . On the former Boston page, on the other hand, an
imaginative profusion of painted border motifs appears, two quadrilobes
in the upper corners with the symbols of the evangelists Mark and John
form the wing for the central depiction of the Eternal Father. In the
initial, the image of John, always elderly, returns, more extensively,
who writes his gospel while listening to the angel.
Cini's
illuminated parchment appears to be a work close to the workshop of
Giustino di Gherardino da Forlì due to some similarities with the
decorations of the Graduale of the Scuola di Santa Maria della Carità
but compared to the same the figures, although accurate, are more
simplified. The ex Boston folio seems to be the work of an author
belonging to a group of illuminators active in Venice in the second
decade of the fifteenth century who, starting from Emilian-Ferrara
models, introduced some innovations with a Lombard flavor in the wake of
Michelino da Besozzo.
The information on this complex is scarce and in some ways
contradictory. The writings of the school inform us that in 1421 it was
decided to decorate the chapter house with a series of paintings to
describe Stories from the Old and New Testaments, however omitting the
detail of the single themes. We do not know when or who may have started
the series, but we do know that Jacopo Bellini was later commissioned to
continue it and that in 1437 he was partially compensated. The first
reports are a bit confusing:
«The first things that gave Jacopo fame
were [...] a story of the Cross, which is said to be in the Scuola di S.
Giovanni Evangelista.»
(Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most
Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, 1550)
«There are
equally different paintings, from the history of the old and new
testament, with the Passion of Christ, not at all vulgar, and the second
part of this work was by the hand of Iacomo Bellino, who also painted
the second part of the Nativity»
(Francesco Sansovino, Venetia
noble and singular city, 1581)
At the time of the other guides
and historical publications, all these works had already been
transferred to non-visitable environments to make room for the cycle
painted by the Mannerists Palma il Giovane, Domenico Tintoretto, Sante
Peranda and Andrea Vicentino between 1595 and 1626. Carlo Ridolfi still
manages to give us an account in 1648, but only referring to what other
«old painters» told him about paintings that have now disappeared, and
taking care to correct Vasari:
«The figure of the Savior and two
Angels who mercifully guided him in the Confraternity of San Giovanni
Evangelista were seen by his hand, and in the first room in many
medium-sized paintings he had distributed actions of Christ and the
Virgin, which, being devoured by time, were with various inventions & in
other forms renewed by other Authors, as can be seen now, which we will
describe as related to us by old Painters.
In the noble room, in the
first picture, Mary as a child was being washed by the obstetricians,
Saint Anne in bed, and Saint Joachim was writing.
Then in the second
the little Virgin went to the temple, occupying herself for many years
in the divine service of weaving priestly remains, decorating them with
embroidery and jewels, and in other sacred functions.
In the third of
hers she saw herself married to Joseph by the hand of the High Priest,
accompanied by many spinsters; there were still young people with rods
in hand next to St. Joseph. The wise craftsman then had her depicted, as
she was announced by Gabriele, and made a large group of celebrating
angels above her. Then the Virgin visited her sister-in-law Elizabeth,
by whom she was welcomed with grateful demonstrations: and how then
under a humble hut she adored the newborn child, and in a ray of glory
she made the militias of the blessed singers with shorts in hand, in
which was written the Gloria in excelsis Deo, which was the tenor of
their celestial song. Joseph stood to one side, and the two vile animals
refreshed their born Lord with their breath.
In the following picture
Jacopo then had depicted the same girl who, to serve the law, presented
herself with the Child to the Pontiff Simeon, offering two candid doves
by the hand of a simple girl. Then she fled to Egypt for fear of Herod,
on a humble donkey, with the innocent Jesus wrapped up between her
clothes, and the old man Joseph on a weak piece of wood carried the poor
remains, many angels preceding her path, who served her for voyage.
When Mary and the holy old man arrived in Egypt, the painter painted for
him how one exercised the art of carpentry with Jesus supplying him with
the tools of the art, and the mother sitting down with supreme grace
sewing, and many angels in glory they consoled the blessed couple with
song. When Herod died, both holy spouses returned to Judea, holding by
hand the noble Son, who with a laughing face looked at them,
demonstrating a sign of joy, and the angels guided the donkey laden with
their poor tools.
Then in another canvas the Savior appeared amid the
disputes of the Doctors, interpreting the divine Scriptures, the Virgin
and Joseph who, having silenced their tears, rejoiced at their
rediscovered hopes.
Jacopo still followed in painting other painful
events of Mary, when Christ having to go to death for the ransom of
mankind, bowed down before his Mother, came blessed by her, and in those
two sorrowful faces the painter attempted to explain the maternal and
affected children.
He then painted how Giovanni brought the sorrowful
news to the Virgin that her Son had been taken from the garden and
carried to the Praetorium by Anna and Caifasso, whereby she fell stunned
into the arms of her sisters. And in the following picture he painted
the Savior being led to Mount Calvary with a heavy piece of wood on his
shoulder, the cruel ministers hastening his way with their fists and
kicks, and from a distance the pious Maries followed him.
Then he saw
himself on the cross near the expiration of his soul, recommending his
Mother to his beloved John; you were a scoundrel preparing the sponge;
others were playing dice, and some were making fun of him.
To
complete those stories, he portrayed the risen Redeemer triumphant from
the monument, who appeared to the Mother with the glorious troop of the
holy Fathers; and in the last place she had depicted the same Queen of
Heaven, after the long pilgrimage of her life, assumed into Heaven,
crowned by the Eternal Father and by the Son with a diadem of glory.
Such were the works Jacopo painted in that hall, his children serving
him no help; but he already had no part in the pictures of the miracles
of the cross, as Vasari wants, which were painted in the other room by
other hands, and by Gentile.
(Carlo Ridolfi, The marvels of art,
1648)
Ridolfi's testimony "by hearsay" with the embellishment
additions - probably his - must be considered with some attention and
reservations. Especially in comparison with the surviving paintings
proposed as belonging to the original cycle. Unusual are the two
episodes cited as subsequent to the Flight into Egypt (the Life in Egypt
and the Return from Egypt), otherwise not known. It is not known who
causes the confusion in remembering Gioacchino intent on writing the
name of his daughter, an event normally referred to Zacharias at the
birth of Giovanni, and in any case no male figure is present in the
crowded Nativity of Mary in Turin. Thus the reveling angels are also
absent in the Annunciation and in the Adoration of the Magi - which
replaces or integrates the Nativity of Jesus mentioned by the writer -
just as the doves narrated in the Presentation in the Temple are
missing. And on the other hand, Ridolfi does not refer to two other
paintings that have survived: the Encounter at the Porta Aurea and the
Wedding at Cana (the latter of rather dubious attribution).
However, there remains a hypothesis, however valid and also suggested by
Roberto Longhi, that the nine paintings that have survived are actually
those made for the School. The technique (tempera on canvas) and the
dimensions (about 120x160 cm) are homogeneous. Equally the series,
although widely manifesting the intervention of different hands, reveals
a search for homogeneity attributable only to Jacopo's direction and to
the availability of the assistants in the group work. The group of
canvases came into the hands of the painter Natale Schiavoni probably in
the 1820s, when a large quantity of works confiscated from schools and
convents were available on the Venetian market. Schiavoni claimed they
came from the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista and he was old
enough to have been able to see them in situ. Of those passed by
succession to his nephew Francesco Canella, also a painter, two were
sold to the Galleria Sabauda and two to the publisher Ferdinando Ongania
who resold them to the collector Roger Fry in 1902 and, after several
changes of ownership, today they belong to the New York merchant Stanley
Moss. More mysterious are the passages of the other five known canvases,
now privately owned, registered in 1882 in the collection of the
Scotsman William Graham, but did not appear in the Christie, Manson &
Woods auction of 1888 with which, after Graham's death, his collection
was dispersed in the antiques market.
The Turin canvases are only
parsimoniously restored and still show deficiencies and signs of aging,
of those finished in private hands it is difficult to assess how much
they have been restored and integrated and what the tamperings are -
both the older ones certainly due to the later Gentile workshop, both
possibly more recent ones – and therefore also the attribution to the
master and/or workshop remains doubtful.
Undoubtedly the most important and famous group is made up of the
series of Miracles of the Cross made by Gentile Bellini and in part by
painters associated with his workshop. To these were also added
Carpaccio and Perugino, the latter with a work now lost. The works were
able to be commissioned thanks to the concession of the Council of Ten
for the enrollment of a further 50 brothers in the school, a concession
requested and granted twice in 1495 and in 1501. It is only possible to
speculate about the original arrangement; originally in the Sala della
Croce, the paintings were moved several times and some cut to make room
for new door openings. From 1820, the entire surviving series passed to
the Gallerie dell'Accademia. and exhibited in a single room in 1947.
It is only on the basis of these three paintings that it is possible
today to evaluate the effective depth of Gentile Bellini: in addition to
these, only a few paintings of decidedly lower complexity remain of him,
while the extensive series painted for the Doge's Palace perished in the
fire of 20 December 1577 and his last work comparable to these, the
Predica di san Marco, which remained incomplete at his death, had to be
finished by his brother Giovanni.
Procession of the Cross in
Piazza San Marco
The Procession of the Cross in Piazza San Marco,
almost an anticipation of eighteenth-century landscape painting, is also
interesting from a documentary point of view. In addition to describing
to us what a procession for the anniversary of the city's patron saint
was historically like, with all the confraternities lined up - and here
obviously focused on the School of San Giovanni Evangelista, whose
members in the center carry the relic of the cross under a canopy - he
documents the mosaic decoration of the facade of the basilica before the
renovations, the polychrome and gilding of the Porta della Carta, the
ancient brick paving interrupted by long lists of white stone (it was
replaced by Tirali with its current configuration only in 1723). The
canvas specifically recalls the event of 25 April 1444, when the
Brescian merchant Jacopo de' Salis prayed for the relic to heal his son
from a serious wound.
Miracle of the Cross at the San Lorenzo
bridge
Equally documentary is the canvas of the Miracle of the Cross
at the San Lorenzo bridge, with the frescoed palaces and the ancient
three-arched bridge of the San Lorenzo convent. The depiction tells of a
prodigy that occurred between 1370 and 1382: the cross, by some
accident, fell into the water from the bridge but escaped from the hands
of those who had dived in to fish it out and could only be picked up by
Andrea Vendramin, great guardian of the School. On the lower side of the
canvas are some excellent witnesses kneeling: on the left Caterina
Corner with her entourage of ladies, on the right the Bellini family
(identified in order in the progenitor Jacopo, her nephew Lorenzo, her
son-in-law Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni and Gentile). However, there is a
possibility that this second group represents some male members of the
Corner family.
Miraculous healing of Pietro de' Ludovici
The
Miraculous Recovery of Pietro de' Ludovici tells us how the devotee was
cured of a pernicious quartan fever by touching a candle which had been
near the relic. The event is represented inside a church, probably that
of San Giovanni Evangelista. The triptych on the altar also recalls the
one reproduced by Lazzaro Bastiani in the other description of the
church in this same series. The composition seems to derive from a
drawing by Father Jacopo (book of drawings in the British Museum),
however there are some studies sketched by Gentile for the tabernacle
and the ciborium (Graphische Sammlung, Munich). Although most place the
painting in 1501, therefore last among those by Gentile's hand, Giovanni
Battista Cavalcaselle suggested bringing it forward by a few years due
to some ingenuity.
Miracle of the relic of the cross at Rialto
The Miracle of the Relic of the Cross in Rialto by Vittore Carpaccio,
dated 1496 and therefore one of the first in the series, narrates the
miraculous healing of a demoniac by the patriarch of Grado through the
intercession of the relic. In 1544, following the observations of the
«prudent messer Tizian pictor», a piece was cut off at the bottom left
to allow the opening towards the new Sala dell'Albergo. It was then
badly patched. Carpaccio, called into the enterprise after the success
of the Stories of Saint Ursula, dedicated himself to the enterprise with
his typical descriptive nature. Thus, behind the stage/loggia where the
miracle takes place, we recognize the glimpse of the ancient palace of
the patriarch of Grado with its long window and battlements similar to
the current Fontego dei Turchi otherwise known only through the De'
Barbari map. Carpaccio goes into the accurate description of customs and
uses by painting the swarming of master gondolas in the canal and the
crowded group of the company of stocking mixed with the brothers on the
bank but also more prosaically. along the right wall, the sign of the
inn of the Sturion, and above the clothes hung out to dry. In the center
of the right half is the Rialto bridge, still in wood, as it was before
the collapse and reconstruction. Another document is the situation of
the Fontego dei Tedeschi before the fire that led to the current
sixteenth-century building. And among the typical cone-shaped chimneys
the bell towers of Santi Apostoli and San Giovanni Crisostomo stand out
in their primitive configurations.
Miracle of the Cross in Campo
San Lio
The Miracle of the Cross in Campo San Lio by Giovanni
Mansueti narrates the episode that happened during the funeral of a
brother who had little devotion to the relic when, suddenly, the cross
became very heavy and untransportable except by the pious parish priest
to whom it had to be delivered in order to be able to introduce it into
the church. Definitely less brilliant than the other works in the
insistent representation of the rigid figures at the windows and on the
roofs, it nonetheless shows the influence of Gentile and a certain
sympathy for the ways of Carpaccio. The painter, however, was keen to
sign the work declaring himself fully a disciple of Bellini: it can be
read in the scroll held up by the man on the right, the one who brings
his hand to his hat as a sign of greeting, perhaps a self-portrait. It
is quite certain that the painting was made by freely interpreting a
preliminary drawing by Gentile, perhaps the one kept in the Uffizi.
Worth noting are the curious peacock perched on the salient of the
church and below, stuck towards the corner, the even more curious label
that reads «casa da fitar ducati 5».
Miraculous healing of the
daughter of Benvegnudo da San Polo
The other painting by Mansueti,
the Miraculous healing of the daughter of Benvegnudo da San Polo,
executed five years later, is more mature. In the past, despite the
correct attribution of Ridolfi, it had been considered the work of
Lazzaro Bastiani, now it is universally assigned to Mansueti. It is
probably one of the paintings executed after the concession by the
Council of Ten in 1502 for the enrollment of another fifty brothers. The
scene narrates the event of the sudden recovery of the little girl from
an illness she had already suffered from since her birth thanks to the
touch of three small candles that her father, a brother of the School,
had brought close to the relic. Alongside the author's Bellini faith,
the work reveals a strong suggestion for the works of Carpaccio. Despite
some rigidities in the figures, the setting inside a portico accurately
described in the furnishings and architectural details, the spatiality
of the landscape clippings visible through the windows and the
liveliness of the costumes make the canvas decidedly pleasant and
interesting.
Offering of the relic of the Holy Cross to the
brothers of the School of San Giovanni Evangelista
Particularly
interesting for the description of the ancient configuration of the
Scuola and the church of San Giovanni Evangelista is the painting by
Lazzaro Bastiani Offer of the relic of the Holy Cross to the brothers of
the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista. In this case a miracle is not
remembered but the delivery of the relic by Philippe de Meziéres, Grand
Chancellor of Cyprus, to the Guardian great Andrea Vendramin is
depicted, a fundamental episode in the history of the school. The
meticulous execution shows us what the facade of the church was like
with its large terraced porch now all covered by the reconstruction of
the Badoer hospice. In the distance you can see buildings that have now
been completely renovated and the bell tower of San Stin with its pine
cone-shaped cusp surrounded by four aedicule spiers, now demolished
together with the church.
On the left, behind the portico, a
large portion of the septum at the entrance to the school courtyard is
visible: in this case the artist presents it to us freely, not bare but
identical to how it is visible from the outside and with the adoring
angels still winged . Immediately on the left rises a body of the
school, the one that houses the Sala della Croce with the refined
inflected arch windows but obviously without the lunettes of the Baroque
superfetation. Going further to the left, the body corresponding to the
chapter house before the renovation by Codussi is visible, but already
with round oculi above the Gothic windows. The presence of traces of
these openings, the result of a raising carried out in 1495, was
revealed during the restoration works at the end of the 20th century.
Detail establishes a post quem date for the execution of the painting.
Which confirms the hypotheses of placing the date between 1996 and 1500,
a period in which the painter, having moved away from the Murano and
Paduan methods, approached the expressiveness of Gentile while remaining
less imaginative and with some harshness of drawing.
Miracle of
the relic of the Holy Cross
The subject of the Miracle of the relic
of the Holy Cross by Benedetto Diana is known to us thanks to the
Description of the paintings of the school of 1787. It deals with the
healing of the son of the public official Alvise Finetti, who fell from
a window on March 10, 1480. In the previous literature, beyond the
sometimes positive evaluations (as in Zanetti's book of 1771), the theme
remained rather uncertain, also suggesting the theme of almsgiving not
very relevant to the rest of the cycle. It is certainly the latest work
in the series, which can be placed towards the end of the first decade
of the sixteenth century. Confirmed by the more "modern" stylistic
setting given by the painter who, as a pupil of Lazzaro Bastiani and
close to the ways of Giovanni Bellini, here also appears involved in
Giorgione's suggestions (especially in the dress and posture of the
character standing on the right ) or at least of the Lotto. The setting
appears to be pure fantasy, although engaged in the representation of a
space. The painting is evidently cut and it is difficult to understand
which parts it is mutilated: a large part of the architectural
representations and the numerous portraits and figures mentioned by
Boschini in 1664 are certainly missing.
Tiziano Vecellio and
workshop: the ceiling of the hall of the new hotel
In 1541 the School
began construction work for a new Sala dell'Albergo which was completed
in 1544. Subsequently Titian was commissioned to decorate the ceiling on
the apocalyptic theme of St. John the Evangelist on Patmos. The master
executed them with the help of his workshop, reserving the central panel
to his own hand, perhaps only partially leaving the numerous panels
arranged around it to form a square to the assistants. Surely the
execution was later than that of the ceiling for Santo Spirito in Isola
(now in the sacristy of the basilica della Salute), but the precise
dating remains uncertain: critics tend to place both cycles after the
artist's stay in Rome (1545- 1546), and probably also after the trip to
Augsburg (1547), moving the execution of the first ceiling to 1549-1550,
and that of the Scuola to the early 1550s.
In 1806 Pietro Edwards
decided to assign the ceiling paintings to the Gallerie dell'Accademia,
and without much hesitation the gilded coffered structure that framed
the panels was demolished. The central painting by Titian was judged a
"very witty composition of which nothing remains but a miserable trace,
having first been destroyed and then vituperously redone" and still
"very ruined and corroded by the years" and it was decided to exchange
it for a Deposition by Bartolomeo Schedoni . First, in 1818, it was
purchased by a Turin collector at the end of the 19th century, and was
reported, in the same city, in the availability of the Count of Arache,
then traces of it were lost until 1954 when the Kress Foundation bought
it from Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, to then donate it to the National
Gallery in Washington. Only the boards that were placed in the contour
remain, not exhibited, in the Venetian galleries. All except one tablet
with a pair of cherubs, now lost.
The central canvas recalls
John's vision, exiled by Domitian to Patmos, which led him to write the
book of the Apocalypse: «What you see, write it in a book and send it to
the seven Churches». Or more precisely, as proposed by Panofsky, the
exact moment in which «I heard behind me a powerful voice, like a
trumpet, […] I turned around to see who it was who was speaking to me».
Giovanni is represented foreshortened, as if he were standing on top of
a mountain together with his eagle, but not with the exact vision that
one would have from the ground but slightly raised and set back in order
to have an imaginative but realistic and fully legible perspective . A
compromise expedient that he had already experimented with for Santo
Spirito and which would become a feature of Venetian ceiling paintings.
Many have put the representation of the figure of the evangelist in
relation to the one painted by Correggio together with the other
apostles on the drum of the dome of the cathedral of Parma, a work
certainly observed directly by Titian in 1543 (and an indispensable
precedent in the perspective from below); others have observed the
similarity of the posture with that of the Eternal Father in the panel
of the Separation of light from darkness by Michelangelo in the Sistine
Chapel or with Momo in the Sala dei Giganti by Giulio Romano and again
with the Niobe by the younger Tintoretto for the Palazzo Pisani in San
Paternian (now in the Estense Gallery). The painting, starting from
Francesco Sansovino, was always historically attributed to Titian, only
the figure of the Eternal Father, moreover in a damaged position on the
canvas, seems to have been reworked by a follower.
In the side
panels Titian renounces the perspective effects using the method of the
so-called «reported paintings» more typical of the early sixteenth
century. However, it is assumed that the intention was to create a
strong contrast with the central panel so as to make it appear as a
breakthrough of the space limited by the ceiling.
The difference
in the execution between the tables, and within the individual
compositions, for example in the images of the evangelical symbols and
in the putti or in the ignudi, suggests some direct and corrective
intervention by Titian on the works of the assistants.
There are
no traces of the arrangement of the panels, nor of the framing. Of the
latter it is impossible to attempt a theoretical reconstruction, at most
we have attempted to propose its conception to Vecellio and to imagine
that the carvings contained references to the painted concepts, but as
there is no trace in the writings of the school we remain in the field
of suggestions. Instead, at least a couple of hypotheses have been
proposed for the arrangement. According to a reconstruction presented on
the occasion of Titian's exhibition in 1990, the tables with the symbols
of the four evangelists were arranged in the center of the sides of the
square perimeter, each flanked by tablets with one or two cherub heads
and at the corners were four masks with the appearance of satyr; outside
this perimeter and centered in a cross on the four sides were four masks
with female features.