Restored in 1990 with Save Venice general funds.

Paolo Veronese’s son Carletto painted this altarpiece around 1590 for the church of San Nicolò on the Lido. Although he showed promise from an early age, Carletto Caliari’s career was short, for he died at twenty-six. Together with his brother Gabriele and his uncle Benedetto, he finished many of his father’s works after Paolo died in 1588.

This painting depicts Saints Nicholas, Benedict, and Mark, as well as a Benedictine monk, in the lower half of the composition; three of the four gaze upward toward an apparition of the Madonna and Child in the heavens, surrounded by four female saints, including Saints Lucy and Catherine, perched among the clouds. A distant landscape recalls that of the Veneto, with distant snow-capped mountains rising above rolling green hills and a village beside a river.

After the Napoleonic suppression of the church, the painting was sold; it is next documented in Wales in 1941 at the sale of the Talbot Collection. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston purchased the painting in 1942, but deaccessioned it in 1960. Count Vittorio Cini bought it shortly thereafter from an art dealer in New York, and returned the painting to Venice.

The painting was restored by conservator Antonio Lazzarin, with the guidance of project director Enzo Talentino of the Giorgio Cini Foundation.

For select projects, conservation dossiers in Italian containing limited textual and photographic documentation may be available for consultation by appointment at the Venice office of Save Venice and the Rosand Library & Study Center. For inquiries, please contact us at venice@savevenice.org.

Carletto Caliari (1570-1596)
Madonna and Child in Glory and Saints
c. 1590, oil on canvas
200 x 400 cm

Fondazione Giorgio Cini
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