Conservative maintenance in 2018 sponsored by Tracey Roberts; previous full conservation campaign undertaken in 2000 with funding from the Young Friends of Save Venice and the Banca di Credito Cooperativo of Pordenone.

Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis, called Pordenone after the town of his birth in the Friuli region of northern Italy, was Titian’s most serious rival in Venice in the 1520s and 1530s. Pordenone worked in a monumental style, employing Michelangelesque forms and poses, which spurred Titian to include such features in his own work. Pordenone’s work was also highly influential to artists of the next generation, including Jacopo Tintoretto. These two large wooden panels are among the few remaining traces in Venice of Pordenone’s meteoric career.

The left panel depicts Saint Martin on horseback, in the act of dividing his cloak to share it with a beggar. The right panel shows Saint Christopher carrying the Christ Child on his shoulders. Both subjects are examples of Christian charity, and they originally served as the doors for a cabinet in which the church’s precious silver liturgical objects were stored. At some point during the church’s redecoration, this cabinet was dismantled, and the paintings removed; they are now displayed high on the left side wall of the church.

Surrounding the panels of Saint Martin and Saint Christopher are Pordenone’s frescoes of figures seeking alms and spiritual aid, which emphasize further the charitable mission of the church and the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Nearly all of Pordenone’s Venetian frescoes have been destroyed or heavily damaged — including those for the presbytery of this same church — making the San Rocco supplicants rare examples of the artist’s work in Venice.

The panels were featured in the Il giovane Tintoretto exhibition held at the Gallerie dell’Accademia from September 7, 2018 to January 6, 2019.

These stunning panel paintings have undergone two recent conservation treatments thanks to Save Venice. In 2018, they underwent emergency conservative maintenance to treat areas of lifting and flaking paint, and were installed into special climatized display cases to ensure their long-term preservation. A full conservation campaign was undertaken prior to this in 2000 by Walter and Valentina Piovan, with the guidance of project director Fiorella Spadavecchia 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.

Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis, called Pordenone (c. 1484–1539)
Saint Martin; Saint Christopher
1528-29, oil on panel
250 x 140 cm each

Il giovane Tintoretto exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia

W. R. Rearick, “Pordenone’s Saints Martin and Christopher: A Difficult Restoration for a Difficult Artist” (2001)

Battaglia, Roberta, Paola Marini, and Vittoria Romani, eds. Il giovane Tintoretto. Venice: Marsilio, 2018.

Cohen, Charles E. The Art of Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone: Between Dialect and Language. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.