History
The centerpiece of the School’s life, as it was the meeting place for its government, this room was therefore the first to be completed, even though it did not initially have a permanent decorative scheme.
In May 1564, Banca e Zonta (the School’s governing bodies) decided to have the ceiling decorated at their own expense, starting with the central oval. A competition was launched among the best painters present in Venice: Giuseppe Salviati, Federico Zuccari, Paolo Veronese and, naturally, Tintoretto, who, within a month, were to present their drawings to the School. However, according to Vasari’s account, while the others were still intent on executing their projects, Tintoretto took everyone by surprise. Indeed, he managed to install the painting of Saint Roch in Glory in the center of the ceiling, provoking an indignant reaction from the patrons, who claimed they had asked for drawings and had not commissioned the work from him. But the painter replied to them that this was his way of drawing, and that he knew no other way! Finally, he stated that if they did not wish to pay him for the work, he would donate it to them.
On June 22, the School accepted the gift, and a few days later it was ordered that the painting should not be removed. This sealed an extraordinary “artistic pact” between the painter and the School, which gave life to one of the most extraordinary and coherent pictorial cycles in Venetian art. Between the summer and autumn of 1564, Tintoretto completed the remaining decoration of the ceiling free of charge.
The following year (1565), Tintoretto, having become a member of the School, set to work on and finished the enormous Crucifixion, located above the large counter that conceals the entrance to the Scrigni. In 1553, Titian had offered to paint a picture to decorate this very wall, but without ever producing anything. Tintoretto then completed the cycle between 1566 and the early months of 1567.
The choice of the subjects of the teleri in the Albergo is very interesting. Tintoretto does not illustrate the miracles and episodes from the life of Saint Roch, following the typical direction of the Venetian Schools, but instead represents scenes from the Passion of Christ. This was likely because the life of Saint Roch was already the subject of the paintings in the Confraternity’s Church. The painter and the School could therefore utilize a new theme, destined to form the beginning of a complex iconographic program that would find expansion in the Sala Capitolare.
On the entrance wall, the story of the Passion unfolds according to an unusual narrative order, no longer from left to right, but in the opposite direction:
• on the far right, Cristo before Pilato;
• in the center, above the portal, l’Ecce Homo;
• on the left, the Road to Calvary
a layout determined by the particular meaning intended for them, as objects of meditation within a program full of complex religious and spiritual meanings.
Tintoretto was also responsible for the continuous frieze with cherubs, garlands of flowers and fruit, and the coats of arms of the Scuole Grandi, which joins the ceiling and the walls of the room. A fragment of this very frieze, depicting three apples and discovered in 1905 during a restoration, offers precious testimony to the original brilliant coloring not only of the frieze itself, but of the entire pictorial ensemble.
Gallery
