Restored in 1980 with Save Venice general funds.

Around 1765 Francesco Fontebasso painted a series of four paintings that depict scenes from the life of Saint Peter of Alcantara, a Spanish Franciscan who lived during the early sixteenth century. The saint preached mostly to the poor and made a journey from Spain to Rome, barefoot, to ask Pope Julius III to found convents for the poor in Spain. Fontebasso’s four paintings decorate the Giustinian dei Vescovi Chapel, which is dedicated to Saint Peter of Alcantara and located off of the right transept of the church of San Francesco della Vigna.

In the first painting on the left, Saint Peter of Alcantara and Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Teresa, a fellow Spanish mystic, kneels beside Saint Peter and turns her gaze upward, toward the choir of angels that he indicates with his right hand. The last painting on the left, The Ecstasy of Saint Peter of Alcantara, shows Saint Peter and a group of friars looking up toward heaven; Peter is depicted twice in the composition, kneeling at the center of the painting and ascending ecstatically toward the celestial light in the background. On the far end of the right wall of the chapel, the painting of Saint Peter of Alcantara and Queen Isabella of Spain represents an obviously impoverished and barefoot Saint Peter preaching to Queen Isabella, who is clothed in sumptuous garments; she kneels on a cushion, surrounded by her attendants and soldiers, and has set her crowns and scepter on the ground. In the final painting of the series, The Death of Saint Peter of Alcantara, the dying saint is surrounded by his fellow friars as the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist, Christ, and God the Father look down from heaven, preparing to welcome him.

Francesco Fontebasso received his formal training from Sebastiano Ricci, and was also influenced by the work of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. He was active as a painter of both frescoes and canvases in Venice, Rome, Padua, Treviso, and Trent, and was called to St. Petersburg to participate in the pictorial decoration of the Winter Palace in 1761-62, after which he returned to Venice.

The paintings were restored by conservators Serafino and Ferruccio Volpin, with the guidance of project director Sandro Sponza 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.

Francesco Fontebasso (1707–1769)
Four Scenes from the Life of Saint Peter of Alcantara
c. 1765, oil on canvas

Saint Peter of Alcantara and Saint Theresa of Avila
183 x 140 cm

The Ecstasy of Saint Peter of Alcantara,
178 x 140 cm

Saint Peter of Alcantara and Queen Isabella of Spain,
183 x 151 cm

The Death of Saint Peter of Alcantara
178 x 147 cm