Restored in 1995 with funding from Nicolò and Elena Frigerio Zeno.

A rare Veneto-Byzantine marble relief decorates the tomb of Doge Ranieri Zen (ruled 1253 to 1268) at the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo. The central portion of the relief depicts the enthroned Christ, supported by two flying angels that also resemble victories. This tomb is the first along the wall of the right aisle of the church and testifies to the modesty of earlier ducal tombs in comparison with the more ambitious scale and grandiosity of later ones. The image of Christ enthroned provides a visual allusion to the role of the Venetian doge as ruler. Later ducal tombs would push this visual connection between the doge and Christ even further, as in the funerary monument of Doge Pietro Mocenigo located in the same church — one of the great sculptural masterpieces of Pietro Lombardo.

The work was restored by conservator Toto Bergamo and the Sansovino restoration firm, with the guidance of project director Sandro Sponza 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.

Unidentified sculptor
Tomb of Doge Ranieri Zen
1268, white marble
196 x 108 cm

Brown, Patricia Fortini. Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

Pincus, Debra. The Tombs of the Doges of Venice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.