Restored in 2000 with funding from the Young Friends of Save Venice.

Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis, called Pordenone after his native city in the Friuli region, arrived in Venice in the 1520s after having established himself as a successful and sought-after painter in the Friuli and as far afield as Cremona, where he executed an impressive cycle of frescoes in the cathedral. His powerful painterly style, with monumental, muscular figures in the manner of Michelangelo, was a novelty in Venice, and offered a formidable challenge to Titian.

One of Pordenone’s earliest commissions in the lagoon city was a series of fresco decorations for the church of San Rocco, of which only two small fragments of angels painted in the apse survive. He was then commissioned to produce a set of doors for the church’s silver cabinet, depicting Saints Martin of Tours and Christopher, as well as the flanking fresco decorations of Supplicants.

Although the original location of the cupboard is unclear, it is likely that it would have been located on the left side of the raised barco, the rood screen that served to divide the space of the nave into two halves, separating the space reserved for the clergy from that occupied by the faithful. The frescoes were painted directly on the wall, and the cupboard created by excavating a section of the wall, such that the shutters would have been aligned with the frescoes. Pordenone’s depiction of a continuous architectural space confirms that the shutters and frescoes were conceived as parts of a single decorative scheme.

Situated within an open loggia, the two flanking scenes are filled with crowds of the sick and the destitute, who look to the saints for deliverance from their suffering. That they all face towards the left — the direction of the high altar, in which the relics of the titular saint of the church were preserved — suggests that they are also pilgrims who have traveled to Venice to offer prayers to St. Roch. The inclusion of these supplicants further emphasizes the charitable mission of the church and its associated confraternity, the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

The frescoes were restored by conservators 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)
Supplicants
1528-1529, fresco (detached)
230 x 195 cm each

Scuola Grande di San Rocco: Interior of the Church of San Rocco

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

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