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.

The Sala dell’Albergo, now Room XXIV of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, was originally the boardroom of the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carità, one of the most powerful charitable confraternities in Venice. The officers of the Carità confraternity held their meetings in this richly decorated room and an upstairs space reached via a fifteenth-century wooden spiral staircase, also once kept the Scuola’s registers, statutes, and reliquaries.

The main objective of the conservation campaign from 2010 to 2012 was to restore the legibility and much of the original appearance of this richly decorated space. Conservation efforts led by Roberto Saccuman concentrated on the fifteenth-century wooden ceiling, decorated with gilded and painted carvings, together with the fifteenth-century wooden spiral staircase, and decorative wooden paneling around the room. The new wall upholstery featuring the cruciform insignia of the confraternity was designed exclusively for the Sala dell’Albergo by Rubelli.

Conservator Giulio Bono and his team restored three of the four canvases that adorn the walls which depict scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, to whom the confraternity was dedicated: these paintings include the celebrated Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple by Titian, the Marriage of the Virgin by Giampietro Silvio, and the Annunciation by Girolamo Dente. These last two lesser known works were returned to their original positions after having been kept in storage for over a century.

The fifteenth-century triptych of the Madonna and Child Enthoned in Paradise with the Fathers of the Church by Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni d’Alemagna originally adorned an altar opposite of Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin, but this altar was demolished in 1811 to connect the room to the adjacent Church of the Carità to form the new Gallerie dell’Accademia museum. While the triptych did not undergo conservation treatment during the 2010-2012 campaign, it was moved from the east wall to the west wall in the room allowing Girolamo Dente’s Annunciation to return to its original position.

The conservation team included: Giulio Bono and Erika Bianchini (Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, Marriage of the Virgin, Annunciation); Matteo Rossi Doria (preparation of Titian’s canvas for transport and stretcher); Roberto Saccuman (ceiling, staircase, and dossals); Thomas Charles Nelson (room framing); Uni.S.Ve. (logistics); and Matteo De Fina (photographic documentation).

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.

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.