Restored in 1991 with funding from Dr. and Mrs. Douglas Coleman Brown.

Domenico Tintoretto trained with his father Jacopo and soon became one of his most frequent collaborators, in addition to working independently; following Jacopo’s death in 1594, Domenico took over the leadership of the family workshop. He painted several works for the church of Sant’Andrea della Zirada, an Augustinian church with an adjacent convent of nuns located in an area of Santa Croce called cao de zirada (“start of the bend” in Venetian dialect, referring to the beginning of the Grand Canal), close to what is now Piazzale Roma.

Among these works is Domenico’s canvas depicting the Dead Christ with Saint Carlo Borromeo and Angels. In the painting, the lifeless body of Jesus is held up by an angel on the right, while Borromeo supports Christ’s right arm and raises a hand to his heart in a gesture of reverence and devotion. He is depicted in his red mozzetta, or elbow-length cape worn by cardinals.

Carlo Borromeo was the Archbishop of Milan and Papal Secretary of State in 1560 under his uncle, Pope Pius IV. Borromeo was an essential figure in the Catholic Counter-Reformation and in implementing the decrees issued following the Council of Trent. Among other important acts, he instigated strict reform for nuns, hence his appropriate presence in the convent church of Sant’Andrea. Borromeo was canonized a saint in 1610; this provides a clue for the dating of Domenico’s unsigned painting, placing it among the artist’s works executed after this date.

Following the Napoleonic suppressions, the convent of Sant’Andrea was partially destroyed and the church was neglected in the following centuries. In 1971, the majority of its artworks were removed and placed in storage, including Paolo Veronese’s Saint Jerome Penitent, which was restored by Save Venice in 1988 and is now on long-term loan to the Accademia Galleries.

The work was restored by conservator Ferruccio Volpin, with the guidance of project director Annalisa Perissa of the Superintendency of Fine Arts of Venice.

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.

Domenico Tintoretto (1560–1635)
Dead Christ with Saint Carlo Borromeo and Angels
Post-1610, oil on canvas
282 x 166 cm

Echols, Robert and Frederick Ilchman. Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018.

Matino, Gabriele and Cynthia Klestinec, eds. Art, Faith, and Medicine in Tintoretto’s Venice. Venice: Marsilio, 2018.