Painted statues and architecture in Venice

Painted statues and architecture in Venice were quite common in medieval times or in the early Renaissance. The stone or marble façades of the palaces, the bas-reliefs decorating the portals and the frames of the windows, the capitals on top of columns often used to be painted in bright colors and gilded with shimmering gold leaf.

In the late 1530s a different Renaissance style prevailed and Venice was sort of “bleached”. No more colorful façades, no more painted statues. Instead, white sculpture and architecture took over as it was believed to be faithful to ancient architecture. Too bad the idea that statues and architecture in ancient Rome were all white proved to be mistaken.

A colorful Venice: painted sculpture and architecture in the arts

It is not hard to imagine what Venice looked like at that time as several paintings of the late 1400s or beginning of the 1500s show the city’s painted architecture in detail, quite a photographic reproduction. 

At the Accademia Galleries in Venice you can admire the oil paintings by Vittore Carpaccio, Gentile Bellini, Lazzaro Bastiani, Benedetto Diana and Giovanni Mansueti for the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista. The cycle called “The miracles of the Cross” is a great source of information in this sense. 

Also, still in the Accademia Galleries, you can admire the ideal city in Vittore Carpaccio’s cycle of Saint Ursula. Even if Carpaccio’s art is supposed to portray Brittany, it is his Venice wrapped in colorful marble that we can see.

Painted statues and bas-reliefs in Venetian architecture

But there’s more than paintings portraying painted Venice. Painted statues and architecture in Venice were really common and when exploring the city, do pay attention to tiny details which reveal the original colors. Not all those colors are in fact gone. At a first look, the remains of those colors covering statues or bas-reliefs may look like dirt. But they are not.

The sarcophagus of Doge Francesco Dandolo in the Frari church (1339)

The relief represents a Dormitio Virginis, the Sleep of the Virgin Mary, surrounded by the apostles and featuring Jesus holding his mother’s soul to accompany to heaven. This sarcophagus was once entirely gilded, but blue pigments are quite evident for the background or the clothings of Mary’s soul and some apostles.

Traces of red color of the dress of the Virgin Mary sleeping is still visible between the foldings and red is also the color of her shoes. Right above the lunette by Paolo Veneziano shows the Doge and his wife in adoration in front of Mary and Jesus, with the intercession of St Francis and St Elisabeth. Possibly the colors we see in the painting are the colors once faded from the sarcophagus.

The Ca’ d’Oro façade (1434)

Along the Grand Canal we can admire the façade of the most famous house in Venice, the so-called Ca’ d’Oro (House of Gold), now Galleria Giorgio Franchetti. Marino Contarini, son of the Procuratore Antonio married with Soradamore Zen in 1406: the house near Campo Santa Sofia was part of her dowry. After her death in 1417, he readapted the house. Between 1421 and 1434, a team of architects, stonecutters and painters were all involved and worked together.

It was Jean Charlier from France who was entrusted to reenforce with colorful pigments and gold leaf every section in marble or stone. We should not call it the Ca’ d’Oro really. Red, ultramarine blue, black, white lead also covered its façade.

The bas-relief at the Scuola dei Calegheri at Campo San Tomà (1479)

In the little campo near the Frari church dedicated to St Thomas, we can admire the bas-relief representing the miracle of St Mark with Anianus.

Anianus was a shoemaker in Alexandria, who, while fixing St Mark’s shoe, hurt himself. St Mark healed his bleeding hand as we can see here. The sculptor, likely Bartolomeo Bon, represented St Mark’s blessing. Anianus would then convert to christianity and he became the second patriarch of Alexandria for coptic Christians. Colors are quite clear. Yellow (maybe gold in the past?) is the color of the mantle. Green leaves for the orange trees. The blue sky beautifully follows the contours of the city with its towers and crenellated walls.

Antonio Rioba in Campo dei Mori (1400s)

At the corner in Campo dei Mori in Cannaregio, the statue of a man with an iron nose easily attracts our attention. Quite realistic as the statue is almost as tall as a real man, it has a name, too.

You can read “Rioba” engraved in the large parcel, beautifully wrapped in ropes, carried over the shoulders. The man holds a box in his left hand, wears short boots and a dress with large sleeves and a skirt with soft foldings. In between the foldings you can see the remains of red pigments. Next to this gentleman, you can see three more figures, all of them with turbaned heads. Nearby you can see a bas-relief showing someone very similar to Rioba by a camel. Rioba is the only one still with some colorful details. Moreover, in this old photo, we see his skin was also that of a black moor. When the whole statue was painted, the statue’s nose didn’t seem inappropriate as it does now.

Recipes to paint stone and marble

Techniques to gild marble are quite well known. When it comes to painting, pigments were mixed with linseed oil and were laid on clean, smooth marble or stone with a brush. Some protection was finally given varnishing the painted surface with egg white. In a text of the Middle Ages, it is also recommended to use garlic juice, especially when it came to gilding marble — in fact the bulb of garlic contains some essential oil with a glueing effect. Garlic, oil and… gold instead of chili. Sounds like an interesting sauce!

Why painted statues and architecture in Venice?

But why going through all the work and costs to paint stone or marble? What brought Venetians to turn their city into a triumph of colors?

There were many reasons why pigments were used to paint stone slabs, statues or decorative elements. As Marco Tosa well points out in his extensive research on polychrome architecture and sculpture in Venice (Annuario Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, 2013), pigments were used to give a congruous look to the façade, especially when the building featured a mix of different styles and materials. 

Pigments also hid defects and the low quality of certain stones: they looked like some precious marble, whereas they were just stone slabs. It was therefore not just pure love for decoration, but it was a way to give value to something otherwise not so precious. 

It was thanks to this combination of colorful marble and sculptures painted in bright pigments that Venice could boast itself as in Marco Tosa’s words as a city where antiquity could be at the same time “structural support, trophy and marble wonder”.

by Luisella Romeo
registered tourist guide in Venice, Italy
www.seevenice.it

For a better understanding of the subject, here is my bibliographical source:
Marco Tosa, Architetture e sculture policrome a Venezia. L’immagine perduta della città antica in the Annuario Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, 2013

In the cover, you can see the turbaned statue of a levantine man, standing near Tintoretto’s House in Cannaregio