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The once-forgotten monument to Alvise Della Torre in the Basilica dei Frari is receiving well-deserved attention and renewed scholarly focus as a result of recent conservation treatment funded by Save Venice. This modest wooden casket is mounted on a large panel painting and hangs high on the wall of the right-hand aisle of the Frari.

This unusual artwork recounts a violent episode in the history of La Serenissima involving two noble Friulian families – the Della Torre and Savorgnan. Nobleman Alvise Della Torre was assasinated by a member of the Savorgnan family in 1549 while aboard a gondola on the Grand Canal. The golden pavilion-type canopy is decorated with five coats of arms of the Della Torre family and a grisaille narrative scene that depicts the recovery of Alvise’s body from the water, and a skull rests on a red pedestal just above the wooden coffin.

The tomb’s details had become shrouded by darkened varnishes and heavy overpainting and the wooden panels that comprise the painting were infested with wood-boring insects. Thanks to new research by art-historian and Save Venice Board member Prof. Patricia Fortini Brown, who uncovered the tomb’s dramatic history, Save Venice came to the rescue of this truly unique monument.

During treatment, conservators were surprised to discover that the canopy was painted using Natrojarosite, a yellow pigment most commonly used in Ancient Greece, and not usually found in artworks from 16th-century Venice. Conservation treatment also confirmed that although the wooden structure of the tomb is of modest quality, the painting was completed by an expert hand.