Restored in 2003 with funding from Nardi Jewelers through the California Chapter of Save Venice Inc.

Outdoor devotional reliefs, tabernacles, niches, and shrines are common in Venice. Adorning doorways, building façades, and street corners, they were designed to invite passersby to a moment of private devotion in the midst of the hustle and bustle of their daily lives. An elegant example of this is the fifteenth-century relief depicting the Madonna and Child with Saint Peter on the Fondamenta Quintavalle, near the church of San Pietro di Castello. The enthroned and crowned Madonna holds the Christ Child on her lap on the right-hand side of the composition, while the old and bearded Saint Peter kneels before her to receive the keys to the kingdom of heaven. He accepts the Christ Child’s gift as the first and original sacrament of Holy Orders, one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church.

The work was restored by conservator Anna Keller, with the guidance of project director Emanuela Zucchetta 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.

Unidentified sculptor
Madonna and Child with Saint Peter
Fifteenth century, Istrian Stone
210 x 157 cm