Conservation funded by the Arthur Loeb Foundation; the Micky and Madeleine Arison Family Foundation; Richard K. Riess, Anne Fitzpatrick Cucchiaro and Stephen Cucchiaro, through the Boston Chapter of Save Venice Inc.; and Thomas Schumacher and Matthew White.

In recognition of Prof. David Rosand’s life-long involvement with Titian’s great painting, and years of service to Save Venice, the Board of Directors dedicated the restoration of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple to him, with deep admiration and affection.

Titian executed this canvas depicting the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple between 1534 and 1538 for the Sala dell’Albergo of the Carità confraternity. Responding to the setting, Titian’s long, rectangular composition acknowledges the tradition of earlier narrative painting cycles in Venetian confraternities. In this work, the young Mary ascends the steps of the Temple of Solomon, as a crowd of spectators looks on. She is surrounded by a halo of light that signifies her divine nature, for it has been painted to be so brilliant that it outshines the natural illumination entering from the windows of the room. The masonry pattern and colors of the building just behind the Temple recall those of the Doge’s Palace, aligning the identity of that palace with Solomon’s as a palace of justice. The classical torso and the old egg seller in the foreground represent the two worlds of pagan and Jewish antiquity that are about to be superseded by the new Christian era of grace. On the left-hand side of the composition, the inclusion of portraits of the governing board of the confraternity and the giving of alms to the begging mother with a child in her arms are explicit references to the Scuola and its dedication to charity.

In September 2010 this large canvas, over twenty-six feet long, was removed from the wall and transported to the Misericordia restoration laboratory in Venice under the supervision of Matteo Rossi Doria; the conservation treatment undertaken there by Giulio Bono and Erika Bianchini took nearly two years, and was completed in 2012.

In 2013, this restoration was named an Italian Heritage Award Winner of the International Prize for the Valorization of Italian Cultural Heritage; specifically, it was awarded the First Prize for Painting Restoration.

Save Venice’s continued dedication to preserving the artistic heritage of Venice was recognized with this award for excellence in project planning and management, restoration methodology, synergy, and time and cost efficiency. The prize was conferred by the jury of the Italian Heritage Awards, composed of Italian and international experts, at a ceremony in Rome on October 4th, 2013.

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.

Titian
Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple
1534-38, oil on canvas
335 x 775 cm

Brown, Particia Fortini. Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio. Yale University Press, 1988.

Conn, Melissa and David Rosand. Save Venice Inc.: Four Decades of Restoration in Venice. Venice; New York: Save Venice Inc., 2011.

Rosand, David. Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State. University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

Rosand, David.  Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto. Cambridge; New York; Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997.