Conservation completed in 2007 with partial funding from Emily and Walter Mead.

Painted for the offices of the property court in the Doge’s Palace in 1421, this triptych was almost certainly commissioned to mark the occasion of one thousand years since the legendary founding of Venice in the year 421, on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation.

The triptych is made up of three panels of different sizes. On the central panel, a crowned personification of Justice is raised on a dais, where she is seated between two lions and holds a sword in her right hand and scales in her left. Justice is the primary virtue claimed by the Venetian state, and the lions allude to the justice and wisdom of Solomon. The female figure of Justice had even come to represent the personification of Venice herself. This identity is confirmed by the presence of Saint Michael in the left panel, minister of justice at the Last Judgment, who is shown in the act of unsheathing his sword to strike the final blow to the dragon beneath his feet and asks the enthroned Justice to “reward and punish according to merit and to commend the purged souls to the benign scales.”  The Archangel Gabriel, bringer of peace, is depicted in the right panel, holding a lily in his left hand as he raises his right hand toward Justice in a gesture of benediction.

Venetian legend professes that on the feast day of the Annunciation, when Christ was conceived for the spiritual salvation of humanity, God decreed the foundation of the city that was to offer political salvation to the Christian world following the fall of the pagan Roman Empire.  In the allusive complexity of its self-representation Venice came to celebrate itself as a virgin city, never having been conquered, never violated. Jacobello’s figure thus acquires a complex persona, at once Justice, Venice, and the Virgin Mary. Justice and Peace were indeed the two fundamental concepts claimed by the Venetian government.

The conservation of the Justice Triptych was a complicated and lengthy process. The panel had undergone numerous conservations in the past, particularly to address a large damaged area on the depiction of Justice, which was most likely caused by heat damage during the 1577 fire in the Doge’s Palace.

In 2006, the campaign began with work on the wooden support structure of the painting by Roberto Saccuman and the frame by Thomas Charles Nelson. Conservators Sandra Pesso and Giulio Bono meticulously thinned and removed the numerous non-original surface residues and heavy overpainting from previous interventions, revealing the artist’s original colors and details. Due to the three-dimensionality of the painting’s gilded relief details, filling in the losses in those areas required expert precision and was a very lengthy process.

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.

Jacobello del Fiore (c. 1370–1439)
Justice Triptych: Saint Michael the Archangel; Justice; Archangel Gabriel
1421, Tempera, gesso relief, and gilding on wood panel
208 x 133 cm
208 x 194 cm
208 x 163 cm

Gallerie dell’Accademia: Homepage

Gallerie dell’Accademia: Link to the Work

Manieri Elia, Giulio, ed. Masterpieces Restored: The Gallerie dell’Accademia and Save Venice Inc. Venice: Marsilio, 2010, pp. 18-43