Conservation in 2018 supported by Save Venice general funds.

The tomb monument of Count Alvise della Torre, located in the Basilica dei Frari, is quite unlike other funerary monuments of its time. Installed high above the door leading from the right-hand aisle of the church to the cloister, the monument consists of a simple wooden casket and a painting behind it. Recently attributed to Andrea Schiavone by Prof. Patricia Fortini Brown, the painting depicts a pavilion-type canopy with curtains that are held back by two winged putti. Five coats of arms of the della Torre family decorate the canopy; at the center, where the curtains are parted, is a skull that drips blood onto the casket below. Darkened by age, the painting is difficult to make out and goes largely unnoticed amongst the more prominent tombs that line the walls of the church at eye level.

This long-forgotten monument commemorates a violent episode in the life of the Most Serene Republic involving two noble Friulian families: the della Torre and the Savorgnan. In 1549, during Carnival, Conte Girolamo della Torre was involved in an altercation in Padua with Giovanni and Tristano Savorgnan. Giovanni Savorgnan was badly injured. Della Torre was found guilty by the Council of Ten and sentenced to 10 years of exile in Crete. Although the sentence was surprisingly harsh, the Ten wished to make an example of Girolamo to discourage feuding by its unmanageable mainland nobility and refused to reduce it. On the eve of Girolamo’s departure to Crete, his brother Alvise, a prelate in the Friuli, and other relatives traveled to Venice to see him off. As their gondola was rowed past San Marcuola on the Grand Canal, they were ambushed by Tristan Savorgnan and a gang of rowdies. Alvise and his brother-in-law Giovanni Battista Colloredo were murdered, along with a canon from Cividale and two servants.

The two incidents of 1549 were the consequence of a long-running feud stemming from an equally bloody event in Udine in 1511, when partisans of the Savorgnan family had murdered the father of the della Torre brothers. Nonetheless, the Venetian authorities were outraged by the multiple murders on the Grand Canal and banned Savorgnan and his henchman from Venetian territories for life and set a price on their heads. Alvise’s body was taken to the Frari for burial.

The humble wooden casket, probably draped with a brocade cover, was installed high on the wall along with the painting. Most unusual, even unique, are the narrative scenes painted in grisaille on the bell-shaped cap of the canopy that depict Alvise’s assassination and the retrieval of his body from the Grand Canal. The ensemble was probably intended to be provisional until a permanent monument could be constructed, but it remains in place to this day. Its obscure placement has kept it safe from further damage. Conservation has revealed — indeed resurrected — a precious artifact of Venetian history, that offers a rare “window” into a time when the feudal ethos of the landed nobility of the Terraferma clashed with Venetian republican values.

The tomb’s details had become shrouded by darkened varnishes and heavy overpainting and the wooden panels that comprise the painting were infested with wood-boring insects. Conservator Giulio Bono and his team removed these non-original surface layers before repairing the fragile wooden structure, inpainting any losses, and applying a final coat of protective varnish. Pigment analysis confirmed that the canopy of the tomb was painted using natrojarosite, a yellow pigment most commonly used in Ancient Greece, and not usually found in artworks from sixteenth-century Venice. Conservation treatment also confirmed that although the wooden structure of the tomb is of modest quality, the painting was completed by an expert hand.

Thanks to new research by art historian and Save Venice Board member Prof. Patricia Fortini Brown, who uncovered the tomb’s dramatic history, Save Venice came to the rescue of this truly unique monument.

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 artist
Tomb Monument of Alvise Della Torre
c. 1550-51, oil on panel
320 x 380 cm

Basilica dei Frari: Homepage

Chorus Association: Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari

Fortini Brown, Patricia. “A Death in Venice: The Forgotten Tomb of Alvise Della Torre.” Artibus et Historiae, 34, 67 (2013): 137-59

Fortini Brown, Patricia. The Venetian Bride: Bloodlines and Blood Feuds in Venice and Its Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021