Restored in 2007 with funding from the Young Friends of Save Venice.

In 1596 Vincenzo Scamozzi adapted rooms adjacent to the Senate Chamber and above the doge’s private apartment into a vestibule and chapel for private use by the doge and the senators. The original rooms had been decorated with paintings by Titian and Vincenzo Catena, but what remains today are eighteenth-century frescoes and stucco work.

Figural painter Jacopo Guarana and quadratura painters Girolamo Mengozzi-Colonna and his son Agostino were tasked with decorating the chapel with frescoes. The fictive architectural setting created by the Mengozzi-Colonna appears to expand the space of the chapel through its remarkable trompe-l’oeil illusionism. Jacopo Guarana produced the monochrome frescoes of allegorical figures and putti on the walls, as well as the grandiose depiction of Saint Mark in Glory Surrounded by Allegorical Figures on the ceiling.

The ceiling fresco by Guarana in the antechamber of the chapel depicts an Allegory of Good Government; according to Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna, writing in 1817, the allegorical figures in the central fresco represent Peace, Good Fortune, Abundance, Justice, and Wise Governance, and those in the four ovals placed at the corners of the ceiling represent Might, Justice, Science, and Dominion.

A donation to Venice’s Istituto Veneto per I Beni Culturali restoration school allowed conservation students to spend an academic year working on fresco restoration in the Palazzo Ducale. Their work was overseen by project director Annalisa Bristot of the Superintendency of Monuments 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.

Jacopo Guarana (1720–1808), Girolamo (1686–1774) and Agostino Mengozzi-Colonna (c. 1725–1792)

Saint Mark in Glory Surrounded by Allegorical Figures; Fictive Architecture
1766, fresco
Private Chapel (Chiesetta) of the Doge, Palazzo Ducale

Allegory of Good Government
1766, fresco
Vestibule of the Chiesetta, Palazzo Ducale

Palazzo Ducale: Homepage

Delorenzi, Paolo. “Devozione, potere e segreti a Palazzo Ducale: la Chiesetta del Collegio tra storia e arte.” In La Chiesetta del Doge a Palazzo Ducale di Venezia, edited by Camillo Tonini and Cristina Crisafulli, 21-53. Crocetta del Montello (Treviso): Antiga Edizioni, 2014.

Wolters, Wolfgang. The Doge’s Palace in Venice: A Tour Through Art and History. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010.