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Word & Image

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A taxonomy of images: Francesco Sansovino and the San Rocco Christ

Carrying the Cross
Andrew R. Casper

Online Publication Date: 01 January 2010

To cite this Article Casper, Andrew R.(2010)'A taxonomy of images: Francesco Sansovino and the San Rocco Christ Carrying the
Cross',Word & Image,26:1,100 114
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/02666280902944460
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02666280902944460

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 A taxonomy of images: Francesco Sansovino and the
San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross
ANDREW R. CASPER
One of the most prolific developments in recent studies of
Renaissance art is the re-evaluation of the role and status of
religious images. These endeavors have required negotiating
entrenched period stereotypes that place the reverence for
artistic achievements within the domain of the Renaissance
and assign the cultic veneration of icons to a manifestly medieval
devotional experience. In an effort to temper this disparity,
Rona Goffen1 and Sixten Ringbom2 have discussed the absorp-
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tion of the forms of devotional icons into fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century religious works in Venice and northern Italy.
Alexander Nagel has outlined similar formal developments in
the art of Michelangelo, which the author identified as a man-
ifestation of the reform of art.3 Perhaps the most vocal and
certainly the most controversial recent voice has been that of
Hans Belting. His Bild und Kult (later translated as Likeness and
Presence) described the degeneration of icons into art. In his
account, the medieval cult of images was replaced by the emer-
gence of Renaissance artistic ideals, arguing that a heightened
concern for aesthetic quality had a radical effect on the styles of
artistic representation --- which in turn altered the way works of
art were received.4 The advent of this era of art and its sympto-
matic elevation of aesthetic value, according to Belting, cata-
lyzed a new purpose for the creation of images. He saw the new
advancement of pictorial beauty undercutting the potential for
religious pictures to function as cult images that generate spiri-
tual arousal. Of course, others have questioned Beltings treat-
ment of art and icon as mutually exclusive concepts, while
also taking issue with the notion that the cult attention to sacred
images in the West was a phenomenon altogether inconsistent
with Renaissance sensibilities.5 Consequently, the study of mir-
aculous images and their cult following, which have been his-
torically underrepresented in discussions among historians of
the early modern era, is now more central in the scholarly
discourse of post-medieval art.6 Others have introduced exam-
ples of how even creator-based displays of artistic virtuosity from
the Renaissance period, which might otherwise be thought to
have garnered interest for their aesthetic accomplishments
above all else, attracted a devotional attention resembling pre-
existing conceptions of the medieval cult of images.7 Nagel and
Christopher Wood addressed this topic in a recent reassessment
of Renaissance art that attempts to dismantle the notion that the
very advent of a Renaissance signaled a shift in viewer response
to keep in step with the artistic developments normally regarded
100
Word & Image ISSN 0266-6286 # 2010 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/tf/02666286.html
DOI: 10.1080/02666280902944460
as the periods primary contributions. They propose that the
Renaissance viewer confronted religious images with a substi-
tutional model of analysis instead of a performative one. The
former would have linked contemporary images with ancient
prototypes in a process akin to the medieval practice of venerat-
ing icons as copies of originals. They warn that the latter model,
where the creative union of artist and style has a direct bearing
on an images meaning and function, distorts Renaissance
modes of seeing that were not so different than those practiced
by its predecessors.8
One facet of the question concerning the status of the icon in
the early modern period remains overlooked. The precise con-
temporary terminology that artists, theologians, and other
members of the complex social fabric of the time used to identify
these works is conspicuously absent from most of the more
recent analyses of Renaissance religious imagery. This essay
offers new material and a new method to the study of the
religious image in the Renaissance, relying on a philological
examination to come to terms (literally) with the language of
art and to codify terms used to describe the various kinds of icons
worshipped by the faithful in the second half of the sixteenth
century. The primary source for this essay is Francesco
Sansovinos Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare, a book first pub-
lished in 1581 (figure 1). It is but one example of the literary genre
of the guidebook, whose dramatically increased proliferation in
the sixteenth century remains relatively unexplored by art his-
torians.9 While Sansovinos text has been and continues to be an
invaluable resource for scholars on account of its documentation
of the history, customs, rituals, and festivities of the city of
Venice and its populace, it does not often feature prominently
in art history scholarship beyond a routine citation for prove-
nance, and sometimes attributions, of sixteenth-century
Venetian objects.
This article makes use of Francesco Sansovinos guidebook as an
art historical document in a different way. Texts like Sansovinos
list, in an inventorial fashion, the kinds of images that were deemed
worthy of public devotion. When approached cautiously as histor-
ical records, they prove useful for the study of the language of art
and for the definition of the Renaissance icon. The topography of
Venice central to Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare provided a forum
for its author to map out a taxonomic system of classification for
miracle-working icons and painted altarpieces. Sansovino broad-
casts his survey of Venetian churches, palaces, civic buildings, and
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Figure 1. Frontispiece of Francesco Sansovino, Venetia citta nobilissima et
singolare (Venice: 1581).
the objects contained in them with an informed contemporary
voice, revealing a particular sensitivity to the status of pictures as
devotional stimuli in Venice following the Council of Trents
emphasis on the efficacy of religious art. He deploys a range of
terms to designate different types and categories of images, each of
which provides insight into how he and other sixteenth-century
viewers conceived them. The words in Sansovinos text --- or more
precisely stated, his choice of words --- are not at all incidental, but
rather follow a semantic pattern defined by his understanding of
their meaning. Since the author never defines his terminology, its
conveyance of meaning is predicated on the assumption that his
readers --- members of a network of shared customs and habits ---
were likewise equipped to recognize such words and their linguistic
nuances. It is thus the product of a taxonomic system by which
types of images that share certain features are given distinct labels.
The premise of this investigation, therefore, is that language is
culturally conditioned, and that the study of linguistic systems
entails an investigation akin to archeology through unearthing
semantic subtleties of certain words by exploring the practice of
their usage.10 The modern reader must rely on the context, or the
specific instances in which certain words appear, in order to gain
access to the books overall meaning. Through a close reading of
the text and an informed analysis of the manner in which the
author describes the various types of images adored by the faithful,
Sansovinos Venice emerges as a crucial source for determining
what constituted an icon in the early modern period. Key to this
investigation, to be discussed later, is a painting of Christ Carrying the
Cross created for the church of San Rocco that was described by
Sansovino and the sixteenth-century art critic Giorgio Vasari as
both a virtuoso work of art and an image responsible for super-
natural acts. This painting can be seen as exemplary of newly
emerging conceptions of a category of images codified in part by
Francesco Sansovinos portrayal of Venice and her religious images
that combined characteristics otherwise deemed exclusive to the
categories of art and icon.
Sansovinos Venice
Francesco Sansovinos scholarly output was vast. His guidebook
to Venice represents just one genre of his many literary pursuits
that included translations, anthologies, edited editions, original
works of poetry and history, all representing the widest variety of
humanistic and scholarly endeavors.11 Though Venetia citta nobi-
lissima et singolare is arguably his best-known undertaking, his
decision to compose an encomiastic guidebook exclusively on
Venice represents an ambition to honor a city that was not his
native one.12
Prior to his publication of this text in 1581 he had composed a
few other, albeit much shorter, works on Venices mythical
origins, history, politics, customs, and artistic treasures. Most
scholars identify Sansovino behind the pseudonym Anselmo
Guisconi used to publish Tutte le cose notabili che sono in Venetia in
1556. Fifteen years later, in 1561, he used his own name to
publish Delle cose notabili che sono in Venetia, a dialogue in which
two travelers, identified only as a native venetiano and a foreigner
of unidentified origin, traverse through and marvel at the citys
wondrous riches, with long sections devoted to dress, ceremonial
rituals, religion, arts, and the history of the Doges and civic
government. This text was reissued numerous times after its
initial publication. In 1566 and 1567 the content was altered by
the printer Domenico Franceschi, who also changed the title to
Dialogo di tutte le cose notabili che sono in Venetia.13 Only on one other
occasion did Sansovino write a book that could be classified as a
tourist guide. His Ritratto delle piu nobili et famose citta dItalia (1575)
narrates the history, sites, and monuments worthy of interest for
visitors to many Italian cities, and in so doing documents the
inclination for the late Renaissance Italian citizen to travel.14
Francesco Sansovinos Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare is, by
scale and format, the culmination of his efforts to eulogize his
adopted city. While the first edition of the Delle cose notabili was
only 79 folios in length, the main text of his subsequent guide-
book numbers 286 folios. Sansovino also discarded the dialogue
format in favor of a more encyclopedic survey of the city orga-
nized first by neighborhood and then by other topics, a scheme
101
 that made the book easier to consult but not intended to be read
straight through. This guidebook proved to be so popular that
Sansovino wanted to reprint it, but his death in 1586 prevented
him from doing so.15 The text was greatly expanded in two
subsequent editions by Giovanni Stringa in 1604 and by
Giustiniano Martinioni in 1663.
Francesco Sansovinos original version of Venetia citta nobilis-
sima et singolare is divided into 14 separate libri. The first six are
each devoted to one of the citys sestieri or neighborhoods:
Castello, San Marco, Cannaregio, San Polo, Santa Croce, and
Dorsoduro. The seventh book describes the citys lay confrater-
nities or Scuole Grandi, with individual sections listed under
headings for the Scuola della Carita, Scuola di San Giovanni
Evangelista, Scuola della Misericordia, Scuola di San Marco,
Scuola di San Rocco, Scuola di San Teodoro, and the Scuola
della Passione. Book VIII deals with various public and private
secular buildings, including palaces, piazze, government cham-
bers, and warehouses. The final six books cover topics ranging
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from the architecture and interior furnishings of private palaces
to Venetian history, politics, and customs.16
As a city and society, Francesco Sansovinos Venice lives up
to its legendary and inescapable reputation so eloquently embo-
died by the ideology known as the Myth of Venice.17 As
described in all of Sansovinos literary treatments of the place,
it is a city that was founded by divine providence and stood as a
bastion of civic liberty and personal freedom. Venices structural
environment reflects this unique political, social, and historical
prestige. The pages of his writings on Venice --- always enthu-
siastically laudatory --- guide the reader through the citys emi-
nently rich artistic embellishments, highlighting the works of art
in all media that collectively contribute to the citys fame and
grandeur.18
One aspect in particular is the focus of this study --- Venetian
piety. As part of Sansovinos florid portrayal of the divine
Venice, he praises both the city and its inhabitants in various
passages for being resolutely devout.19 Dozens of prominent
religious structures and ecclesiastical institutions stand out in
the pages of Sansovinos book as proud markers of a distinct
preoccupation with religious concerns.20 One of the primary
ways in which Sansovinos guidebook documents the piety of the
Venetian faithful is by recording the various roles that religious
images play in their lives. His descriptions of the churches and
scuole are replete with inventorial lists of the many images, relics,
and furnishings that could be found inside them. He is always
careful to mention individual images that, for one reason or
another, are worthy of widespread veneration. Indeed,
Sansovino singles out no fewer than 10 that are credited with
producing miracles of some kind.21 Other much more recent
surveys corroborate Francesco Sansovinos portrayal of
Venices cult of images in the Renaissance period. Of the 75
icons reported in situ in an exhaustive twentieth-century survey
of Venetian churches by Alberto Rizzi, no fewer than 36 of them
date between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. Many of these,
based on the authors attributions, were likely in place around
102 ANDREW R. CASPER
the time Sansovino set out to write his guidebook.22 Of course,
Venice, as a site of widespread devotion to icons and religious
images, was far from exceptional. As much as Sansovino desired
to portray Venice as unique and without peers, his city was but
one of a number environments where a collective, civic obliga-
tion to venerate images in the era of the Counter Reformation
was made manifest. As we shall see later, other authors similarly
portrayed Rome as a city whose spiritual life revolved around
the holy images scattered throughout its ecclesiastical institu-
tions that testify to its claim to be the spiritual, if not geographic,
center of the Christian world.
The language of art and images
Francesco Sansovinos pedigree made him well suited for the task
of describing Venices artistic treasures to an audience of diverse
yet most assuredly educated and literate readers. His father was
Jacopo Sansovino, the sculptor and architect responsible for
designing the Loggetta, Biblioteca Marciana, and other parts of
the urban environment celebrated in Venetia citta nobilissima et
singolare. Francescos pride in his fathers work is evident in all of
the formers literary descriptions of the Venetian artistic land-
scape.23 Sansovino drew on the knowledge of others when dis-
cussing artistic matters and when listing the countless works of art
located throughout the citys ecclesiastical and secular settings,
even though he leaves his sources unidentified.24 As Elena Bonora
has noted, however, he must have borrowed from Daniele
Barbaros translation and commentary on Vitruvius for his survey
of Venices architecture and urban layout appearing in Book
IX.25 He also used and in some cases modeled relevant sections
of his own book after Marcantonio Michiels Notizie dopere di
disegno, an inventorial survey of the private art collections com-
piled between 1521 and 1543 that would have offered a glimpse
into homes to which he had no access.26 His descriptions of some
works of art bear the unmistakable resemblance to passages of
Giorgio Vasaris Lives of the Artists (though Sansovinos praise for all
things Venetian does not fit Vasaris known bias against northern
Italian art).27
This is all just to say that Francesco Sansovino, both through
experience and erudition, was equipped with the tools necessary
to compose a literary companion to the artistic treasures of
Venice. Nevertheless, to call the younger Sansovino without
doubt one of the best art critics of his time28 hyperbolizes his
expertise and misrepresents what he aimed to accomplish with
his book. The text is not a treatise or commentary on art, but
rather more of a record of the artists, subjects, and locations of
these works. These allowed the reader, whether visitor or resi-
dent, to seek out those works and monuments when touring the
city. Despite occasional remarks on a work of arts aesthetic
appeal (his descriptions of paintings at the Palazzo Ducale by
Veronese, Tintoretto, and others are, for example, among the
most efflorescent of the entire text), the Venetia citta nobilissima et
singolare is on the whole less concerned with deploying rhetorical
praise for the styles of Venetian art than what might be gleaned
from his earlier Delle cose notabili che sono in Venetia of 1561.
 One other essential difference between Sansovinos Delle cose
notabili and the later Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare is that the
former makes no mention whatsoever of icons or religious
images. The latter guidebook, however, provides an invaluable
survey of Venetian images classified and categorized into a series
of types. While it is our present task to infer meaning from a close
analytical reading of the text, it is necessary first to explain why
the word icon does not appear anywhere in his book.
A direct derivative of the Greek "i0 x scarcely existed in the
early modern vernacular, and thus there is no period equivalent
to match our modern notion of what constitutes an icon. This
linguistic lacuna is evident in other sources from the same
period. The Italian icona does not appear in either of Giorgio
Vasaris two editions of the Lives of the Artists (1550 and 1568) and
was used only sparingly in Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabrianos
Degli errori e degli abusi depittori (1564) and Gabriele Paleottis
Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane (1581) --- two texts
roughly contemporary with Sansovinos guidebook that deal
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specifically with the form and function of religious images.
Instead, the closest approximation to our modern term icon
that was widely utilized in the sixteenth century is immagine.29
This is the term that is used most often by Francesco Sansovino
to designate religious images that attain a particular kind of cult
prestige. He uses the term immagine (which he always spells
imagine in accordance with orthographic norms of the time)
no less than eleven times throughout the first eight books of the
Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare when describing religious pic-
tures in the churches and public institutions of Venice.
What, precisely, does the word immagine signify and how might
its usage by Francesco Sansovino aid our understanding of the
categories of religious pictures? A rough cognate for the English
word image, the term itself had no fixed subdefinition that could
have informed his understanding of what it means. When used in a
religious context, authors typically treat it more or less synony-
mously with the concept of the icon then already established in the
sixteenth century. For example, the only time Ludovico Dolces
Dialogo della pittura (1557) elaborates on its meaning the author relies
on pre-existing formulations articulating what was then the stan-
dard definition of icons: Indeed imagini are not only, as the saying
goes, the books of the ignorant, but also (almost like stimuli of a
highly agreeable kind) awaken understanding to their devotions ---
lifting both the former and the latter into contemplating the subject
that they represent.30 The first part of this statement, regarding the
analogous role of pictures to words, derives from the Gregorian
justification of images as the bible of the illiterate; the second point,
about the transparency of an image when serving as a conduit
through which the beholders prayers reach the prototype, is a
revival of a cliche  formulated first by Basil the Great and perpe-
tuated, among others, by Saint John of Damascus in his treatise On
Holy Images.31 In other words, Dolce did not offer any new insights
into what calling a religious work of art an image might have
meant for the people who venerate such things in his own time, but
he did anchor the term to the pre-existing formulations that defined
icons in that period by invoking older Byzantine declarations.
Similarly, the passing of the Council of Trents decree on sacred
imagery in 1563 concerning the proper role and function of icons
issued in the 25th session restates these same characteristics and
others deriving from the decree on sacred imagery issued pre-
viously by the Council of Nicaea in 787.32
Later sources, however, are much less precise. According to
Paleottis Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane (1582), sacred
images are any objects formed through artificial means:
Wherefore when we say image we take it to mean every
material figure produced by that arte called disegno which has
been derived from another form in order to resemble it.33 Put
another way, an image has no other purpose than to represent
some external thing. Nothing, as Paleotti stated, is in itself
inherently divine; rather, all images are ordinary things made
to represent another truth. Even if images do partake of some
special measure of sanctity (by direct participation with the
divine, such as through contact with the body of a holy person),
this quality does not affect the material essence of the substance
out of which it is crafted.34 Later treatments appear to have
secularized the word into a broad term defining, simply, a work
of art. Definitions in seventeenth-century dictionaries refer only
to the artificial nature of immagine as a derivative of the Latin
imago. The Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1612) defined it
simply as any painted or sculpted figure, irrespective of subject
or formal characteristics,35 and the Vocabolario Toscano dellArte del
Disegno (1681) treated it in the same way, listing among its
synonyms effigie (effigy), figura (figure), sembianza (semblance),
and aspetto (aspect) --- terms that denote only an images cap-
ability of representing something else in the most general of
circumstances.
This cognitive imprecision might not seem to make the word
immagine effective as a precise taxonomic label. Nevertheless,
Francesco Sansovino did employ the term in a highly systematic
way. As noted earlier, the choice of words in Sansovinos writing
is intentional and meaningful. His varied language is not a
rhetorical distribution of loosely aligned synonyms, but rather
a calculated deployment of unique and codified terms. Looking
at all of the religious images from Sansovinos guidebook as a
group, we can see that he used the term immagine in a very
deliberate manner to designate a certain type of object defined
by a determined set of criteria. His use, therefore, is a symptom
of a culturally defined understanding of what it signifies. Put
simply, Sansovinos guidebook to Venice used language to dis-
tinguish between objects that, for one reason or another, have
acquired an unusual amount of prestige. These receive the label
immagine. Any other picture that merely represents a sacred
subject he calls simply a pala (altarpiece), pittura (painting), quadro
(picture), or opera (work) --- depending on the location, type, and
medium of such objects.
A closer examination of the immagini described in Sansovinos
text will provide a clearer picture of how the term functions as a
taxonomic label to denote pictures of an extraordinary and often
supernatural quality. Some images are revered because of their
103

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Figure 2. Virgin Nicopeia, twelfth century. Basilica di San Marco, Venice.
Photo: # Alinari/Art Resource, NY.
uncommon and prestigious means of creation. One prominent
example is the Virgin Nicopeia in San Marco (figure 2).
Sansovino gives only a short description of it (an imagine of
our Lady painted by Saint Luke) as part of a long list of relics
housed in the Basilica.36 This was one of a whole class of
images commonly venerated as original works by Saint Luke,
who, besides authoring one of the Gospel biographies of
Christ, was also credited with having produced a portrait of
him from life.37 The 1604 edition of Venetia citta nobilissima et
singolare edited by Giovanni Stringa makes additional mention
of a similar imagine of the Virgin Mary, placed over the altar
called the Madonna of the Apostles, [which] was painted by
the hand of Saint Luke, then located in the church of SS.
Apostoli.38
Not all of the images mentioned in Sansovinos guide were
revered as the famous icon(s) purportedly crafted by Saint Luke.
Instead, he tends to use the term immagine almost exclusively for
images that possess other extraordinary qualities, usually of a
miracle-working kind, that give them a special devotional value
over more inert objects.39 Many of these images acquired their
miraculous powers unexpectedly. The imagine della Beata Virgine
in San Marciliano demonstrated its supernatural powers on its
own accord, having reportedly transported itself to Venice from
104 ANDREW R. CASPER
the city of Rimini.40 In the church of San Marco, Sansovino
describes one imagine di un Christo that issued blood after an
assailant stabbed it with a dagger. Afterward it was moved from
its exterior location into the present church, from which point it
had been the subject of widespread public veneration.41 Other
images are more generally described as being miraculous, but
the specific manifestations of their supernatural properties are
not disclosed. The first image mentioned in Sansovinos long
description of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari is a Christo mir-
acoloso at the center of the church, below which the painter
Titian was entombed.42 Similarly, the church of Santa Maria
della Carita was founded by Marco Giuliano to replace a taber-
nacle that housed an imagine della Vergine that was similarly
famous on account of various miracles.43
The miracles enacted by some images were the impetus for
constructing the churches that shelter them --- the assumption, of
course, being that these icons would attract crowds of pilgrims.
Examples of this sort include the imagine miracolosa at San
Paterniano, whose miraculous works occasioned the restoration
and beautification of its church.44 The oratorio of Santa Maria
della Fava (formally named Santa Maria di Consolazione)
replaced a modest capitello or tabernacle and was built, according
to this text, after the wife of Francesco Amadi witnessed miracles
performed by limagine di nostra Donna dipinta in 1480.45
Sansovino evidently confused the origins of Santa Maria della
Fava with those of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, a small yet extra-
ordinarily opulent marble-clad church built between 1481 and
1489 by Pietro Lombardo to house what the Venetia citta nobilis-
sima et singolare designates simply limagine di Nostra Dona.
Sansovino notes that the image was placed in a tabernacle in a
tight warren of lanes near the Amadi family residence in the
parish of Santa Marina. After having performed various mira-
cles starting in 1480, it attracted so many people that threat of
suffocation required that it be moved to a more spacious
location, thus prompting the need for building the more com-
modious church that now stands near the site of the original
street-side altar.46 Sansovino does not provide any particulars
concerning the origins of this miracle-working image. Listed
only as an anonymous work with no description of its formal
attributes, this image of a standing Madonna and Child --- in
contrast to the more common bust-length format --- is now
known to have been commissioned by Francesco Amadi around
1408 and is thought to have been executed by the painter
Niccolo di Pietro (figure 3).47
The distinction between immagini and other kinds of religious
pictures as outlined in Sansovinos text is intensified by passages
where examples of two types appear in the same ensemble,
thereby allowing for a direct linguistic comparison of his use of
key terms. A case study of this sort, and one that also attests to
the longevity of Sansovinos reliance on categorized image
types, is offered in the descriptions of the interior of the church
of San Fantino in both the original 1581 text and the expanded
1604 edition by Giovanni Stringa. The earlier entry mentions
an imagine of the Virgin brought by the aforementioned [Pisana]

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Figure 3. Niccolo di Pietro (attributed to), Madonna and Child, ca. 1408. Santa
Maria dei Miracoli, Venice. Photo: # Scala/Art Resource, NY.
family to Venice from the Levant that, having worked miracles,
gave rise to the occasion to bring the church to its proper state
[ridurre il tempio al suo debito fine].48 The subsequent edition
provides more information: opposite this imagine there is a quadro
by Palma [Giovane] that represents Doge Luigi Mocenigos
benediction to God with the Signoria in the Church of San
Marco, when the new Venice emerged from the memorable
defeat of the Turkish navy at the Curzolari islands [Battle of
Lepanto] on the day of S. Giustina in the year 1571.49 The
linguistic juxtaposition of the miracle-working immagine with
the quadro painted by Palma Giovane is strikingly reminiscent
of an even more direct confrontation between these two terms
found in documents pertaining to Peter Paul Rubenss commis-
sion for the altarpiece of the Chiesa Nuova in Rome, completed
in 1608.50 The artist was charged with the task of providing a
painting (or, more precisely, a Bildtabernakel) for the high altar
into which an older and much celebrated miracle-working icon
of Santa Maria in Vallicella would be installed. In official con-
tracts and subsequent correspondence discussing this project,
Rubens referred to his own painting (the quadro) and the miracle-
working image he was given the task to embellish (the immagine)
with different words, suggesting that he conceived of the two as
different types of objects in exactly the same way Sansovino
seems to have parsed the distinctness of each in his own text.
In both of these contexts, with the terms positioned in close
proximity to each other, the implication is that the differences
between an immagine and a quadro lie mainly in the disparity
between action and non-action: an image is active and operates
miracles, whereas a picture is inert, capable only of represent-
ing or displaying the likeness of something.
This use of the term immagine to designate cult images of a
particularly mystical and extraordinary sort is mostly consistent
with the frequent appearance of the word in guidebooks to other
cities from the same period. The rising demand for and subse-
quent availability of tourist guides to the city of Rome from the
beginning of the sixteenth century provided numerous examples
on which Sansovino could model his own book on Venice. The
majority of these books were used as pilgrimage guides for the
1550 and 1575 Jubilee years, and like Sansovinos guide they
supply an inventory of the kinds of images and icons housed in
Roman churches while singling out those that were especially
worthy of devotion.51 Consequently, the terminology deployed
within these texts substantiates the present investigation into
how the period terminology used to describe religious images
reflects an established taxonomic order. It falls outside of the
scope of this study to determine if Sansovino consulted and
appropriated passages of any of these other guidebooks specifi-
cally, but even a cursory overview of some of the more popular
examples indicates that his persistent deployment of immagine as
a category label followed standards of usage that were more
wide-reaching than his own work. Luigi Contarinis Lantiquita di
Roma, first published in Naples in 1569, mentioned that there are
seven immagini of the Madonna painted by Saint Luke in Rome,
though only listed five --- one each at San Sisto, Santa Maria
della Consolazione, Santa Maria Nuova, the Aracoeli, and
SantAgostino.52 Onofrio Panvinios Le sette chiese Romane,
which was translated into the vernacular by Marco Antonio
Lanfranchi in 1570 (subsequently incorporated into Pier
Francesco Zinis one-volume collection of works for the 1575
holy year) indentifies the Salvatore icon of Christ at San Giovanni
Laterano as one of the most holy immagini in the city.53
The most extensive and consistent use of the word immagine is
found in Andrea Palladios Descritione de le Chiese, Stationi,
Indulgenze & Reliquie de Corpi Sancti, che sonno in la Citta de Roma
(first published in 1554). This small guide mentions no fewer than
17 immagini in churches throughout Rome that are the same type
as those objects in Sansovinos text that receive the same label.
Saint Luke reportedly painted nine of them --- including the
same Salvatore icon mentioned above, which Palladio describes
as having been started by the Evangelist but completed by an
angel.54 Seven images (including three of those painted by Saint
Luke) were regarded as being in some way miraculous. Some
had prototypes that spoke through the image to various people
(as in the imagine of the Crucifixion at San Polo and the imagine
of the Virgin Mary at San Clemente) and others escaped various
forms of destruction (as in the image of the Virgin Mary at San
Giovanni Calabita and Saint Lukes icon at Santa Maria
105
 Nuova). Pietro Martiro Felinis Trattato nuovo delle cose maravigliose
dellalma citta di Roma of 1610 incorporates many of Palladios
entries and adds more descriptions of prestigious immagini.
Similar to Sansovino, works of art that are not singled out for
carrying some sort of devotional prestige in each of these books
are termed opere, pale, pitture, or quadri.
Maniera greca as devotional style
The style and external appearances of these images play no role
in Sansovinos description of their cult appeal. A quick visual
analysis of the miracle-working icons reveals that they are, with
few exceptions, anonymously crafted images from an older
generation and therefore reflect pre-Renaissance artistic styles
--- as demonstrated by two of the immagini described above. The
Virgin Nicopeia (see figure 2), for example, although regarded at
the time as a Saint Luke original, in fact exhibits the frontal
address, figural flatness, and other formal attributes character-
istic of twelfth-century medieval painting. The Santa Maria dei
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Miracoli icon (now attributed to the artist Niccolo di Pietro; see
figure 3) shows a later pictorial mode of the early fifteenth-
century international gothic style, characterized by a more
rounded treatment of Mary and Christ to further ornament
their stiff, formal verticality and to offset the profusion of dec-
orative flourishes like the stamped floral designs on Marys robe
and the calligraphic lines defined by the gilt edges of this cloth.
But these formal qualities, which must have been noticeable to
Sansovino, go unmentioned in Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare.
In keeping with his goal to supply an exhaustive survey of types
of Venetian art and icons, Sansovino did not often preoccupy
himself with stylistic or aesthetic assessments of the miraculous
images listed in his guidebook. His silence on matters of external
appearance suggests that he saw style as being irrelevant to an
images function and status as a cult icon. Instead, it is their
miracles that make them worthy of cult attention.
However, there is one adjective that Sansovino repeatedly
attaches to some of the works he mentions, and in this case the
category label seems to be based on a different set of criteria than
what distinguishes an immagine from other inactive pictures.
While he articulates the supernatural properties of some images,
other works are classified in some manner as being Greek --- but
without a clear explanation as to what this term, used as critical
shorthand for a larger category of images, is meant to signify.
These works could be Byzantine icons without known magical
properties brought to Venice after the Fourth Crusade of 1204,
when Byzantine spoils were acquired as trophies of conquest
and cultural appropriation. Alternatively, these Greek works
may be the products of Cretan icon painters working in the post-
Byzantine style. Some of these Cretan painters contemporary to
Sansovino, including Michael Damaskinos, Domenikos
Theotokopoulos (El Greco) and others of the so-called Veneto-
Cretan school, worked in Venice for both Cretan and Venetian
clients. In this case the adjective Greek could function as a
stylistic descriptor for images whose formal appearances, as with
the two images mentioned above, corresponded to the maniera
106 ANDREW R. CASPER
greca then described in some sixteenth-century art theoretical
writings.55 In some cases maniera greca takes on the same mean-
ing as it does in Vasaris Lives of the Artists (though without its
overtly pejorative connotations), where it was used as a signifier
for an older more medieval mode of pictorial representation that
utilized a more liberal use of gold leaf, flatter figures, and a more
linear emphasis than what was then common in more contem-
porary Italian works of art. For example, at the church of Corpo
di Christo Sansovino makes mention of the San Domenico
Altar that was painted by Jacobello del Fiore, who painted
various works throughout the city in the maniera greca.56
Judging from other known works of art from this fifteenth-
century painter, the San Domenico altarpiece would have
exhibited the stylistic roots in Byzantine art for which the artists
paintings are now characteristically recognized. Curiously,
other Greek works are not paintings at all but relief sculptures
--- such as the silver altarpiece at Santa Maria Mater Domini
that contains 21 relief panels of the Passion of Christ of Greek
craftsmanship [dopera Greca].57 Regardless of medium, however,
none of these Greek works are images in the sense that they
might have produced miracles.
The church of San Marco was the epicenter of Greco-
Byzantine art in Sansovinos Venice. Not only was the structure
itself planned out in the maniera greca (according to a passage of
his text58), but the richest collection of Byzantine and post-
Byzantine sacred works of art in the city were to be found
there. Sansovino guides his readers through this structure in
order to alert them to such examples of the Greek manner:
Up one of the sides towards the altar in the vestibule, he says,
you see a Nostra Donna in marble made alla greca.59 The high
altar contains other bas-relief figures alla greca.60 Sansovino also
describes the mosaics on the ceiling of San Marco as some of the
citys most visible examples of Greek artistry: In this ceiling
there are various stories taken from the Holy Scriptures. These
too are mixed with various prophets, around which are seen
Latin verses in rhyme that signify the contents of the pictures.
Among these, almost all of which are done by a Greek hand, are
some very noble ones that have been created in our own time.61
In other cases, a pictures Greekness has less to do with its
outward appearance or manner of creation than with its func-
tion and efficacy as a religious image. The Scuola della Carita
features paintings of the Passion of Christ painted allusanza
greca.62 It is difficult to determine precisely what Greek usage
signifies, but Sansovino seems to suggest that such images were
venerated in the same manner by which earlier worshippers
prayed to older cult icons. Similarly, Sansovino mentions that
a section of the church of San Polo was created allusansa
Greca.63 The distinction, evidently, is that this structure was
used for services conducted according to the Orthodox rite.
The most curious aspect of Sansovinos taxonomic survey of
Venetian images with regard to the widespread existence of
Greek art and icons is his neglect of San Giorgio dei Greci.64
This church was home to the thriving community of Greek
expatriates, mostly from the island of Crete, and its decoration
 consists of the second largest collection of icons in Venice, after
San Marco. Sansovinos failure to mention a single work in the
interior of this building is made all the more curious by the fact
that he wrote his book shortly after the construction was com-
pleted in 1573, around the time when a call went out for its
interior to be decorated. This omission might be symptomatic of
a general disregard for contemporary Greek painters working
for clients in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, despite the fact that
the more renowned painters Jacopo Tintoretto and Jacopo
Palma il Giovane, who Sansovino frequently mentioned by
name in reference to works completed elsewhere in Venice,
were involved at various states and in various capacities in the
churchs program of interior decoration. Their participation
elicited comments in other sources that also refer to the
Greekness of the churchs images as a qualifier of devotional
appeal, not just a descriptor of its style.
Though partly post-dating the publication of Sansovinos
Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare in 1581, these cases in particular
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clarify what Sansovino meant when he designated certain works
as Greek. When the rather obscure Greek painter John Cypriot
was appointed to decorate the dome (completed 15891590), the
fraternity summoned Tintoretto to act as his artistic advisor.
The stipulation, however, according to the contract, was that
the garments, figures, and expressions will be painted as
demanded of the true art of the Greeks. The question, of course,
is what authority this true art of the Greeks held over other
styles of painting commonly employed at that time by Tintoretto
and others. In this context it might be a matter of artistic taste,
but another similar case involving a competition between an
Italian and a Greek artist at this same church sheds more light
on the issue. When Palma Giovane competed with the Cretan
painter Tommaso Bathas for work at San Giorgio dei Greci, the
jury of the Greek Confraternity selected Bathas on account of
his use of the devout maniera greca.65 The distinction voiced here
seems to be that such works invited a particular form or manner
of devout following of the sort that an image not otherwise
associated with miraculous acts would be unable to attract.
Therefore, an images Greekness, while certainly pertaining to
style to some degree, must also be made manifest in the way in
which the public adored it.
This treatment of the maniera greca as a devotional style is
central to a burgeoning debate among theorists and theologians
around the time Sansovino was writing over its potential to
inspire veneration. In his treatise De veri precetti della pittura of
1586, Giovanni Battista Armenini questioned the devotional
intent of what he judged to be badly wrought religious images
which were for the most part small pictures with certain figures
made alla greca, very clumsy, unpleasing, and all smoky [tutte
affumicate]. In an even graver indictment, he goes on to say that
these pictures appeared to have been placed there for every
purpose but to incite devotion or to ornament such places.66
Armeninis defamation of the Greek style as both artistically and
devotionally deficient can be attributed to the legacy left by
Giorgio Vasari, who repeatedly criticized that awkward Greek
manner [quel maniera goffa greca] in his biographies of Cimabue
and other due- and trecento artists.67
However, while Vasari saw what he elsewhere termed the
monstrosities of the maniera greca as signs of artistic incompetence
when measured against the standards of the modern age, other
writers praised the same style for providing an aura of authenti-
city. For Gregorio Comanini it was mostly a question of modesty
with respect to the way figures are displayed in sacred settings. He
characterized Greek art as being particularly devout in this
regard, saying, in his treatise Il Figino ovvero del fine della Pittura of
1591, that the Greeks were such rigid observers of modesty in
decorating their churches that they prohibited nudes in painting,
and did not even allow clothed images unless they were painted
only from the navel up . . . . They were deeply afraid that
Christians who came to the church to worship and pray might
have their minds distracted from prayer and allow some impure
thoughts to take root in the souls by seeing the lower parts of their
body, though these were covered with drapery, in the figures on
panels or on the walls.68 It was this restraint exhibited by Greek
artists that makes their images so conducive to enabling prayerful
meditation. It was likely these qualities that Sansovino wished to
indicate when using the adjective greca and its derivatives in the
Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare.
Art and image: the San Rocco Christ Carrying the
Cross
Sansovinos guidebook used a set of terms in ways dictated by
the conception of the type of images they were called on to
describe. Yet there are a few cases in which the label immagine,
which is normally reserved for images of a distinctly miraculous
nature, refers to paintings that, although celebrated for their
artistry, are not normally thought of as literally divine. By the
time Sansovino issued the Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare both
Andrea Palladios Descritione and Luigi Contarinis Lantiquita di
Roma had broken with this otherwise consistent use of the label
immagine for anonymously crafted miracle-working icons when
describing Sebastiano del Piombos Flagellation of Christ at San
Pietro in Montorio. Palladio directs his readers to the right-
hand side [of the church] after entering from the principal
doorway [where] there is an imagine of Christ at the Column
painted by the most excellent painter Friar Sebastiano of
Venice.69 Contarini similarly identified this same painting as
an imagine of Christ at the column painted by Friar Sebastiano,
which is one of the most beautiful pictures to be seen in Rome.70
No miracles of any kind are mentioned in either text, and
neither is the image designated as being Greek in any way,
thus begging the question of why this term was delegated to
this work of art.
While instances of this sort are rare, one should consider these
works as categorical hybrids rather than mere aberrations from
Francesco Sansovinos otherwise consistent separation of art
and image as distinct types. One example in particular in
Sansovinos own text at once complicates and enriches our
understanding of the sixteenth-century taxonomy of images
107
 and his sensitivity to the visual arts as a system of categories. On
folio 102v of the Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare in a section of
Book III on the Scuola di San Rocco, he identifies an imagine of
Christ painted by Titian that, having performed various mira-
cles, was frequented with a plentitude of offerings and gifts, not
only from all of Venice, but from surrounding cities as well.71
This is the same painting, formerly located at the church of San
Rocco (rebuilt in the eighteenth century) and now displayed on
an easel near the altar of the Sala Superiore of the adjacent
Scuola Grande di San Rocco, that Sansovino had described
earlier in the text on folio 71v when detailing the furnishings of
the former church: in the left-hand [chapel] from the entrance
Titian painted the famous altarpiece [palla (sic)] of Christ, which
has enriched the Church and the Fraternity.72 Giovanni
Stringas 1604 edition of the Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare
expands on this entry for the Church of San Rocco, saying
that the blessed and holy imagine that was painted by the great
Titian has made both the church and the Confraternity magni-
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ficently rich on account of this image having performed infinite
miracles.73 In both instances, the term immagine is used when
the context refers to its miracles; otherwise, the painting is
merely a pala or altarpiece.
One thing is clear --- the artistic qualities of this picture, even
though it is a more modern work than the other miracle-working
images listed in his text, had nothing to do with Sansovinos
designation of it. While clearly anchored in the sixteenth-century
Venetian painting style, the image is a surprisingly humble one
given its unique prominence in Sansovinos text (figure 4). It is a
small rectangular panel that features a close-up half-length por-
trait of Christ Carrying the Cross --- a compositional format that
others have identified as an adaptation from older cult images.74
With the primary subject presented to the viewer in a clear and
Figure 4. Titian (attributed to), Christ Carrying the Cross, ca. 1508. Sala
Superiore, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice. Photo: # Cameraphoto
Arte, Venice/Art Resource, NY.
108 ANDREW R. CASPER
direct manner, free of distracting details of setting and attributes,
the pictures format makes it well suited for intimate devotional
engagement. Consequently, in the San Rocco Christ Carrying the
Cross, the artist has positioned Christ at the very forefront of the
picture facing to the viewers left and glancing outward. On his
right shoulder he supports the wooden beam of the cross on which
he will soon be crucified while rivulets of blood trickle down his
forehead from wounds administered by the crown of thorns.
Opposite Christ is a figure of a stern-faced bearded Jew (possibly
Simon of Cyrene) who clutches a rope that is looped around
Christs neck. This figure --- old and bald with a graying, pointed
beard and bare arms and shoulder --- complements the more
youthful and fully clothed Jesus, whose brown hair cascades
straight from the part in the center of his cranium before spring-
ing into curls at his shoulders. Behind these two primary figures
we see the profiles of other executioners present during Christs
walk to Calvary --- one behind the bearded man opposite Christ
and the other nearly hidden in the shadows in the space behind
Christs back and underneath the extended portion of his cross.
All four figures are placed against a murky background. Until
1951, when it was removed from the church of San Rocco, the
painting was displayed beneath a lunette featuring The Eternal
Father with Angels Holding the Instruments of the Passion.75 However,
this lunette is not mentioned in the earliest documents of the Christ
Carrying the Cross and was probably added to the ensemble later. It
was only recently ascribed to Titian and probably dates to 1519 or
soon before.76
Despite its rather ordinary and unremarkable composition,
the small devotional painting of Christ Carrying the Cross stands out
because it was the only one that Sansovino classified as an
immagine, accompanied by the requisite miraculous acts neces-
sary to receive this label, and as a work of art that has an artists
name associated with it. (Sansovino did not evidently know, or at
least did not bother to mention, that a painter named Niccolo di
Pietro created the Santa Maria dei Miracoli icon.) This latter
fact would normally invite the more mundane classification of
pala, opera, quadro or any other term befitting its status as a work
created under ordinary artistic circumstances and treated like
any other visual aid for prayer --- and so it was described in the
entry for the church of San Rocco (see above). While it has the
added appeal, according to Sansovino, of being one of the ear-
liest works of art created by Titian, an artist whose prestige at the
time rivaled that of Michelangelo, even this is not usually suffi-
cient to merit the special designation accorded it by the text.
What are the implications of a single object having combined
characteristics of two images categories on the conception of
icons? What does this say more generally about the status of
images in Counter-Reformation Venice? To better understand
the significance of the Christ Carrying the Cross it is necessary to
address first the legends of its miracles, and then the more
problematic issue of its attribution.
Possibly painted after 25 March 1508, when Jacomo de
Zuanne commissioned a tomb for himself and members of his
family in the Chapel of the Cross in the church of San Rocco,
 the Christ Carrying the Cross was described only a decade after its
creation as a work capable of acting in supernatural ways.77 This
quickly acquired reputation prompted the need to furnish a
tabernacle of the kind that housed other miracle-working
icons. Miracles were attributed to the painting as early as 22
July 1519, when the President of the Scuola Grande di San
Rocco recorded a santissimo chruzifixo having performed grand-
issimi miracholli; however, there is some disagreement whether
this statement refers to the Christ Carrying the Cross or to a different
miracle-working crucifix.78 Another slightly later document
dated 27 November 1519 is a little bit clearer, referring to the
great and divine miracles that occur every day at the images
altar.79 The diarist Marino Sanudo, in an entry recorded on 20
December 1520, just over a decade after the paintings supposed
date of creation, offers the most direct account of the reputation
for the Christ Carrying the Cross to act in extraordinary ways. He
remarked that an image in San Rocco matching the composi-
tion of the one currently in question (an imagine of Christ being
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pulled by a Jew) has made and continues to make many
miracles --- so many, in fact, that the sum of donations left in
its honor by pilgrims was so great that they were able to fund the
beautification of the adjoining scuola into one of the most richly
adorned of the citys famed lay confraternities.80 The modern
debate regarding whether or not the miracle-working object
referred to in some of the documents from 1519 had been this
painting all along or another object (a standard, processional
cross, etc.) whose qualities became associated with the image has
little consequence to the present argument. By at least the early
1520s there was no doubt that the painting of Christ Carrying the
Cross had acquired a reputation for operating in mystical ways.
The image was later memorialized in Eustachio Celebrinos Li
Stupendi et Maravigliosi Miracoli del Glorioso Cristo de Sancto Roccho
Novamente Impressa. This souvenir pamphlet, thought to date from
about 1524, consists of both a woodcut reproduction of the
painting on its frontispiece and a long dedicatory poem that
describes the pictures devotional significance and mentions at
least six miracles that the author claims to have witnessed being
performed by the image.81 Celebrino thus describes the object as
a performative icon enacting the same sorts of supernatural acts
and drawing a devotional fervor equal to other images men-
tioned in Sansovinos guidebook. By the time Sansovino
includes it in the Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare the magical
properties of the San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross had become
its most appealing feature.
The other key aspect of the image that is mentioned in
Sansovinos entry is for modern scholars its most controversial
--- the name of its maker. It is essential to keep in mind that none
of the accounts of this painting before Sansovinos time that
describe its supernatural acts ever assign it to any artist, much
less to one as renowned as Titian. Was Francesco himself
responsible for this attribution? Though the Venetia citta nobilis-
sima et singolare could hardly be called a work of art theory or
criticism, its author did not pass up chances to heap laudatory
praise on the artists that made the city of Venice the repository
of artistic wealth and beauty so described. Indeed, Sansovino
eulogized Titian as the most famous painter of his time when
mentioning his tomb at Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, and in
so doing introduced him as a worthy creator of a work whose
captivating appeal may have transcended the normal conditions
of aesthetic experience.82
Nevertheless, it is not likely that Sansovino came up with the
attribution of the miracle-working painting on his own. Giorgio
Vasari described the same image in both editions of his Lives of the
Artists (1550 and 1568). However, the true authorship of the
painting is thrown into confusion. It is in his biography of
Giorgione from the 1550 edition of the Lives where he first
identifies a picture of Christ Carrying the Cross and a Jew
pulling him, which after some time was placed in the church
of San Rocco. Today, on account of the devotion for it, it
produces miracles, as one can see.83 Vasaris description is
significant because it suggests that the paintings ability to act
supernaturally is symptomatic of cultic devotion toward it, and
also that its performance of miracles was still ongoing at the time
of writing in the mid-sixteenth century. However, more pro-
blems arise from the fact that Vasari attributes it to both
Giorgione and Titian in the 1568 edition of the Lives of the
Artists. While the exact same passage from Giorgiones 1550
biography appears in the updated 1568 version, Titians 1568
biography contains a corrective: This figure, which many
believed was by Giorgione, is today the premier object of devo-
tion in Venice, and has received a higher offering of scudi than
what Titian or Giorgione ever earned in their lifetimes.84
Vasaris double attribution has sparked a debate over who was
responsible for painting the San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross
that continues to this day.85
One explanation for this discrepancy might be that the
extreme stylistic similarities between Titians early works and
those of his master Giorgione engendered Vasaris contradicting
attributions --- an excuse favored by Crowe and Cavalcaselle
when they questioned the matter in their foundational biography
of the painter from 1877.86 (One only needs to think of the debates
over the attribution of the Pastoral Concert to see how deeply rooted
and contentious such problems can be.) However, a more careful
consideration of the circumstances of his editing is required to
flesh out the idea, proposed here, that the exaltation of artistic
reputation prompted the attribution of this otherwise anonymous
painting to Titian. Vasari probably revised his text after receiving
more authoritative information after his 1566 trip to Venice,
meaning that his description of the work in Giorgiones biography
was mistakenly never omitted.87 Yet we must wonder if Vasari
changed his attribution because he, like Sansovino, felt that Titian
was a more worthy artist to have works attract the veneration of a
devoted faithful, implying that his powers as an artist compelled
miraculous works to be enacted through it. Since the earliest
documents classify the painting as an anonymous work, the
later reception of the San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross by
Vasari and Sansovino was the first time that an artists name
was attached to this miracle-working icon. The attention that it
109
 continued to demand from its viewers even decades after its
creation is indicative of the renewed importance placed on mira-
cle-working icons in the second half of the sixteenth century. But
the post facto attribution of this work to the hand of a celebrated
artist also signals a then-contemporary exaltation of artists and
their works --- thus serving as a witness to the cult of artistic
excellence in the second half of the sixteenth century.88 Also to
be considered is the fact that Vasaris description of the work in
the 1568 biography of Titian omits the mention of miracles found
in the entries of both Giorgione biographies. This conspicuous
disregard of what had been up to that point the images most
prominent quality speaks to Vasaris own conception of what
makes paintings appealing. It was for Vasari, presumably, its
artistic achievement that was partly responsible for inviting such
ardent devotion and copious monetary donations, not just its
miraculous acts.
Conclusion: an artful icon
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Despite its uniqueness when compared to other images included
in the text, the San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross is key to the value
of Francesco Sansovinos Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare as a
whole for having provided an eyewitness account of the
sixteenth-century conceptions of religious images. Nevertheless,
scholars hoping to uncover incontrovertible facts about the paint-
ing are not likely to be helped much by Sansovinos description of
it. Its two most noteworthy characteristics --- having been painted
by Titian, one of the most prolific and accomplished exponents of
Venetian Renaissance painting, and having enthralled audiences
by producing miracles --- may not even be true. Though there is
no reason to suspect that the composition of the San Rocco Christ
Carrying the Cross itself has changed dramatically, if at all, since
Sansovino first wrote about it, centuries of restoration and
repainting have rendered it impossible to ascertain its original
stylistic qualities. This prevents scholars from determining with
confidence its actual maker --- whether it be Titian, Giorgione, or
someone else. On the one hand, however, its correct attribution
to one artist or another is inconsequential to the pictures promi-
nence as a miracle-working immagine that comes to be regarded as
the product of an accomplished Venetian painter. Similarly, it is
also doubtful that many modern viewers do regard the images
legendary miracles as authentic, favoring instead to view the
stories as rhetorical ornament at best and fabrications at worst.
Yet the truth value of these qualities does not matter when they
were believed to have been factual when they were written down
and disseminated to a literate public in Sansovinos Venice.
Francesco Sansovinos treatment of the San Rocco Christ
Carrying the Cross is very much a product of the time and place
in which he was working. He wrote at a time of high reverence
for aesthetic contributions while also upholding the continuing
reputation for images to attract a cult devotion. His treatment of
the Christ Carrying the Cross speaks to the fact that in their con-
ceptualization, not to mention in the practice of making them,
certain images could be recognized at that time as both icons
and as works of art simultaneously.89 The addition of an
110 ANDREW R. CASPER
aesthetic component to the conceptual treatment of image ---
a miracle-working image produced by the toil of a sculptors
chisel or the deftness of a painters brush --- elevated the status of
the arts and the manual production of religious art, and conse-
quently aided the development of what might best be termed the
artful icon in the second half of the sixteenth century. Even as
an aberration in Francesco Sansovinos descriptions of religious
images, the Christ Carrying the Cross of San Rocco still has much to
say about the taxonomy of images and of the language of art. In
this case, the image stands as a singular object that bridges two
categories together, achieving the unique distinction of function-
ing both as a work of art and as a miracle-working cult icon. As a
result, it is both a product and a beneficiary of a system of
classification that, if not codified by Sansovino, was at least
articulated and eloquently put into use by him. It is a taxonomic
system, a semantic pattern of language deployed to promote the
most prestigious qualities of some of the most prestigious reli-
gious images in sixteenth-century Venice.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Michael Cole, Larry Silver, Ian Verstegen, and Pepper
Stetler for reading various versions of this article and for offering
helpful suggestions to enhance its clarity and organization. I am
also grateful for the feedback received when I presented some of
this material at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference in
October 2008. Unless otherwise noted all translations are my own.
NOTES
1 Rona Goffen, Icon and Vision: Giovanni Bellinis Half-Length
Madonnas, The Art Bulletin 57 (1975): 487515.
2 Sixten Ringbom, Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in
Fifteenth-Century Devotional Painting (Doomspijk: Davaco, 1983).
3 Alexander Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000).
4 See especially Image and Likeness: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art,
trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 1416
and 45890. Belting traces a gradual historical phenomenon that, in his
mind, ultimately results in the complete separation of the conceptual cate-
gories art and icon.
5 Robert Maniura, The Icon is Dead, Long Live the Icon: The Holy
Image in the Renaissance, in Icon and Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium.
Studies Presented to Robin Cormack, eds Antony Eastmond and Liz James
(Burlington: Ashgate, 2003), 88. Opposition to Beltings ideas concerning the
divide between art and icon surfaced in the roundtable discussion published
in James Elkins and Robert Williams, eds, Renaissance Theory (New York:
Routledge, 2008), esp. 21518. For another view, where the concept art
stands as a prevalent feature of the medieval period, see Charles Barber,
From Image into Art: Art after Byzantine Iconoclasm, Gesta 34 (1995): 510.
6 See the various essays on pilgrimage shrines and other sanctuaries
housing miracle-working images that sprang up during the Renaissance in
Erik Thun and Gerhard Wolf, eds, The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages
and Renaissance (Rome: LErma di Bretschneider, 2004). Of course, David
Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) anticipated many of these shifts
in scholarly focus by advancing a more anthropological examination of how
viewers after the Renaissance maintained a responsive association to images
 of all kinds that seems to differ little from the behavior exhibited by their
medieval predecessors.
7 On the cult of images as they pertain to masterpieces by Raphael, see the
engaging study by Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, From Cult Images to the Cult of
Images: The Case of Raphaels Altarpieces, in The Altarpiece in the Renaissance,
eds Peter Humfrey and Martin Kemp (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990), 16589. These issues were addressed in Federika Jacobs,
Rethinking the Divide: Cult Images and the Cult of Images, in Renaissance
Theory, eds James Elkins and Robert Williams (New York: Routledge, 2008),
95114.
8 See Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Interventions:
Towards a New Model of Renaissance Anachronism, The Art Bulletin 87
(2005): 40315.
9 The scholarly study of guidebooks focuses mainly on pilgrimage guides to
Rome. See Sergio Rossetti, Rome: A bibliography from the Invention of Printing
Through 1899. I: The Guidebooks. (Rome: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2000),
Gaetana Scano, ed., Guide e descrizioni di Roma dal XVI al XX secolo nella
Biblioteca della Fondazione (Rome: Fondazione Marco Besso, 1992), Ludwig
Schudt, Le guide di Roma: Materialien zu einer Geschichte der romischen Topographie
(Vienna: Dr. Benno Filser Verlag, 1930).
10 My investigations into the cultural implications of language use derive
from the concept of the Period Eye described in Michael Baxandall, Painting
Downloaded By: [Miami University Libraries] At: 20:03 29 October 2009
and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972),
esp. 29108.
11 Some estimate that around half of his output was historical in nature.
See Paul F. Grendler, Francesco Sansovino and Italian Popular History,
Renaissance Quarterly 16 (1969): 142.
12 He was born in Rome in 1521, though his family first came to Venice in
1527 following the Sack of Rome. Francesco settled in Venice in 1542 after
studying law in Padua, Florence, and Bologna.
13 Adriano Moz, Francesco Sansovino, a Polygraph in Cinquecento
Venice. His Life and Works. (Ph.D. dissertation, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1985), 96.
14 For Venice, see Francesco Sansovino, Ritratto delle piu nobili et famose citta
dItalia (Venice: 1575), 126v35v.
15 Moz, Francesco Sansovino, 172.
16 These are particularly useful for outlining the many ceremonies and
processions that made up its elaborate slate of civic rituals. For Venices
programs of self-presentation, see Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance
Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). Some of Sansovinos
guidebook expands upon topics already covered in his Dialogo del gentilhuomo
venetiano of 1566, where a brief description of the city is followed by a survey of
the customs and habits of various members of Venices social elite.
17 For some recent contributions to the myth of Venice, see
(among many others) Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Venice Triumphant: The
Horizons of a Myth, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2002), John Martin and Dennis Romano,
Reconsidering Venice, in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization
of an Italian City-State, 12971797 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2000), 135, Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice,
David Rosand, Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State (Chapel Hill:
The University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
18 An overview of Sansovinos Venice can be found in Moz, Francesco
Sansovino, 22140.
19 In his earlier dialogue, Sansovino remarked that Venice, more than any
other civilization in history, achieved the distinction of being simultaneously
Christian and free. See Francesco Sansovino, Delle cose notabili che sono in
Venetia (Venice: 1561), 10v. Similarly, in the Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare
(Venice: 1581), 85r he made a point to reference Venice as without doubt [a]
Christian and pious city.
20 Sansovino mentions that each of the citys 72 parishes is richly adorned
with relics. See Delle cose notabili, 10v. Additionally, the six scuole are ricche
dentrate, di paramenti sacri, di argenterie, e di cose appartene[n]ti al culto
divino. Ibid., 29r.
21 These and many other miracle-working icons of the Madonna and
Child are described in the anonymous Venezia favorita da Maria (Padua, 1758).
22 Alberto Rizzi, Le icone bizantine e postbizantine delle chiese
Veneziane, Thesaurismata 9 (1972): 25091. The reception of these icons in
Venice is treated in Nano Chatzidakis, Venetiae quasi alterum Byzantium: From
Candia to Venice: Greek Icons in Italy 15th16th Centuries (Venice: Correr Museum,
1993), 1820.
23 Moz, Francesco Sansovino, 97 and 229.
24 Sansovino credited Marcantonio Sabellico, Bernardo Giustiniano, and
Daniele Barbaro, but nobody else, with providing the basis for his text. See
Sansovino, Delle cose notabili, 2v.
25 Elena Bonora, Ricerche su Francesco Sansovino: imprenditore, libraio e letterato
(Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 1994), 1789.
26 Ibid., 1812.
27 Ibid., 1913.
28 Moz, Francesco Sansovino, 229.
29 The issue of terminology is made more complex by looking at the
various meanings of the German word Bild. See Christopher S. Wood,
Book Review: Hans Belting, Bild-Anthropologie: Entwurfe fur eine
Bildwissenschaft, The Art Bulletin 86 (2004): 3703.
30 Perche le imagini non pur sono, come si dice, libri de glignoranti: ma
(quasi piacevolissimi svegliatoi) destano anco a divotione glintendenti:
questi e quelli inalzando alla consideratione di cio, chelle rappresentano.
Ludovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura intitolato LAretino, in Dolces
Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento, ed. Mark W. Roskill (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2000), 1123.
31 On the original statement and others by St. Basil, see Gerhart B.
Ladner, The Concept of the Image in the Greek Fathers and the Byzantine
Iconoclastic Controversy, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 7 (1953): 134. For the
decrees on sacred images issued at the Council of Nicaea, see The Seven
Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church (Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans, 1955), vol. XIV, 54951.
32 The Council of Trent advises that the honor which is shown [images] is
referred to the prototypes which they represent. . ..That is what was defined
by the decrees of the councils, especially the Second Council of Nicaea.
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. H. J. Schroeder (St. Louis: B.
Herder Book Co., 1941), 2156.
33 Laonde diciamo che per imagine noi pigliamo ogni figura materiale
prodotta dallarte chiamata il dissegno e dedotta da unaltra forma per
assomigliarla. Gabriele Paleotti, Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e
profane, in Trattati darte del cinquecento fra manierismo e controriforma, ed. Paola
Barocchi (Bari: Gius. Laterza e Figli, 1961), 132.
34 Non crediamo noi che alcuna imagine sia cosa divina, o per se o per
participazione, essendo la imagine ordinariamente cosa artificiata, fatta per
rappresentare unaltra vera; eccetto se non avesse acquistata qualche santita
in alcuno delli modi da noi narrate altre volte, i quali pero non appartengono
alla sostanza loro, essendo materiale. Ibid., 251.
35 Figura scolpita, o dipinta, ritratto. Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca
(Venice: 1612), 417.
36 Una imagine di nostra Donna dipinta da San Luca. Francesco
Sansovino, Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare, 38r.
37 This icon is discussed in Maria Georgopoulou, Late Medieval
Crete and Venice: An Appropriation of Byzantine Heritage, The Art
Bulletin 77 (1995): 4935. Though the image itself was always believed to
have ancient origins, its attribution to Lukes hand was relatively recent
by the time Sansovino wrote about it, having been documented only as
far back as a 1463 inventory of the San Marco Treasury. See Goffen,
Icon and Vision, 5089. For a nearly contemporary account of this
icon and its legendary origins, see Giovanni Tiepolo, Trattato della
Imgaine della Gloriosa Vergine dipinta da S. Luca conservata gia molti secoli nella
Ducale Chiesa di S. Marco della citta di Venetia (Venice: 1618). For these
Lukian icons more generally, see Michele Bacci, Il pennello
dellEvangelista. Storia delle immagini sacre attribuite a san Luca (Pisa: GISEM,
1998).
111
 38 Si dice che limagine di Maria Vergine, posta sopra laltare detto la
Madonna de gli Apostoli, fu dipinta di mano di San Luca. Francesco
Sansovino, Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare, ed. Giovanni Stringa (Venice:
1604), 141r.
39 The use of the terms miracle and miraculous is somewhat proble-
matic. While the Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare uses these terms in a literal
sense, Sansovino had previously employed them in a more metaphorical way
as well. One passage of the Delle cose notabili describes a painting of the
Madonna by Giovanni Bellini as miraculous: Et si veggono alcune nostre
donne molto belle e devote: tra le quali a me pare che atte[n]ga il principato
di tutte, una Madonna che in mano del Mag. M. Simon Zeno figliuol del
Procuratore, la qual e miracolosa. Ella e in un picciolo Quadretto & e in
maesta. Sansovino, Delle cose notabili, 17v. However, there is no reason to
conclude in this instance that Sansovino intended his reader to think that this
painting operated in extraordinary ways. Instead, the term was used to
describe the artistic quality of the work.
40 El piu discosto e San Martiale detto Marciliano dal volgo, e questa fu
opera della famiglia di Bocchi lanno 1133 nobile per limagine della Beata
Vergine, la qual si dice per se medesima venne da Rimini, in questi parti.
Sansovino, Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare, 54r.
41 Ma ritornando di nuovo alla porta maestra di de[n]tro, alla sinistra si
trova ut (sic) capitello con un picciolo altare dove si honora limagine di un
Downloaded By: [Miami University Libraries] At: 20:03 29 October 2009
Christo, il qual capitello lanno 1290 era in piazza a punto in quel luogo dove
e hora il primo stendardo verso le case nuove. Ma havendo un scelerato con
empia mano, percosso quellimagine con un pugnale, onde usc fuori della
piaga sangue, fu portato in Chiesa con tutto il capitello & collocato dove si
vede. Ibid., 35v.
42 Vi si honora parimente il Christo miracoloso situato a mezza Chiesa. a
cui piedi e sepolto quel Titiano che fu celebre nella pittura, fra tutti gli altri
del tempo nostro. Ibid., 66r.
43 Percioche essendo prima di tavola attorno ad un capitello duna
imagine della Vergine, famosa per diversi miracoli, Marco Giuliano la
fondo, & indi crescendo a poco a poco divenne celebre fra laltre della citta.
Ibid., 94v.
44 Et San Paterniano per fianco della sudetta Chiesa, fu opera delle
famiglie Bancanica, & Andrearda, Fabiana, & Muazza. fornita di belle
colonne di marmo greco. & notabile altre volte per limagine miracolosa di
un Christo posto sotto il sopportico . . . Ibid., 46v.
45 LOratorio similmente di S. Maria della Fava, il cui diritto titolo e
Santa Maria di Consolatione: fu prima un capitello, nel quale limagine di
nostra Donna dipinta operando miracoli per revelatione della moglie dun
Francesco Amadi che visse lanno 1480 si edifico il luogo. Ibid., 51r51v.
46 Era lanno 1480, limagine di nostra Donna in un capitello alla porta
della Corte Nuova allincontro della casa degli Amadi da S. Marina in
una calle stretta di quattro piedi. Mostrati per tanto diversi miracoli,
& co[n]correndovi ta[n]ta gran moltitudine di popolo, che sandava a rischio
di soffogarsi, la predetta imagine si trasfer nella Corte degli Amadi. Ibid.,
62v. Sansovinos source for this account may have been the similarly worded
description in Domenico Malpiero, Annali Venete dallanno 1457 a 1500, eds
Tommaso Gar and Agustino Sagredo (Florence: 1843), 672. Marino Sanudo
had described this church as una chiesa nuovamente fabricata di una nostra
Donna antichissima, che era su una strata ivi, che fece miracoli, et cotidie
tanti ne fanno che cossa incredibile a veder li arzenti, et statue vi sono, et il
corso della zente che fa dir ogni zorno messe. De origine, situ et magistratibus
urbis Venetae, ovvero la citta di Venezia (14931530), ed. Angela Caracciolo Arico
(Milan: Cisaplino-La Goliardica, 1980), 26. For a modern analysis of this
church see John McAndrew, Venetian Architecture of the Early Renaissance
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980), 15081. The most expansive study of this
church and its origins is Ralph Lieberman, The Church of Santa Maria dei
Miracoli in Venice. (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1972); see
especially 3946 for the miracles enacted by the image. For an analysis of this
image and the extension of private piety into the public sphere, see Margaret
A. Morse, Creating Sacred Space: The Religious Visual Culture of the
Renaissance Venetian Casa, Renaissance Studies 21 (2007), esp. 1824. For its
112 ANDREW R. CASPER
position within Venetian piety as a whole, see Antonio Niero, La Madonna
dei Miracoli nella storia della pieta veneziana: breve profilo, Studi Veneziani
40 (2000), 179205.
47 To my knowledge, the attribution to Niccolo di Pietro in printed sources
goes back only as far as Pietro Checchia, Croniche dellorigine e fondazione del
monastero e chiesa della B. Vergine dei Miracoli (Venice: 1742), 4. The contract for
this altarpiece names only a Maistro Nicolo. See Ralph Lieberman, The
Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli in Venice, 356.
48 Il Tempio di S. Fantino, fabricato gia dalla famiglia Pisana, & restau-
rato con bella forma a te[m]pi nostri, e degno di memoria. Percioche fu
nobilitato per una imagine della Vergine portata dalla predetta famiglia a
Venetia, dalle parti di levante. La quale operando miracolosamente diede
occasione di ridurre il tempio al suo dibito fine. Sansovino, Venetia citta
noblissima, 46v47r.
49 Dirimpetto a questa imagine vi e un quadro del Palma, che rappre-
senta il rendimento di gratie, che fece Luigi Mocenigo Doge, con la
Signoria a Dio nella Chiesa di San Marco, quando venne la nuova
Venetia della rotta memorabile dellarmata Turchesa, fatta ai Curzolari il
d S. Giustina lanno 1571. Sansovino, Venetia citta nobilissima, ed. Stringa,
91r91v.
50 Klaus Kruger, Das Bild als Schleier des Unsichtbaren: Asthetische Illusion in der
Kunst der fruhen Neuzeit in Italien (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2001), 146. See
also Belting, Image and Likeness, 48490 and 5546, Victor Stoichita, The Self-
Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting, trans. Anne-Marie
Glasheen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
51 The list of early guidebooks to Rome, which were first published in the
fifteenth century, is extensive. For an exhaustive bibliography see Rossetti,
Rome: A bibliography from the Invention of Printing Through 1899. I: The Guidebooks.
The classic study of the subject, though less authoritative, is Schudt, Le guide
di Roma: Materialien zu einer Geschichte der romischen Topographie. A large collec-
tion of early guidebooks, including many from the sixteenth century, is kept
at the library of the Fondazione Marco Besso and has been cataloged by
Scano, ed., Guide e descrizioni di Roma dal XVI al XX secolo nella Biblioteca della
Fondazione. See note 9.
52 Circa limagine di S. Maria da S. Luca pinte: havete a sapere, che
sette, se ben mi racordo se ne trovano in Roma: Una in San Sisto, una in
Santa Maria della consolatione, una in santa Maria nova dipinta in un
tabernacolo di marmo, portata di Troade citta di Grecia a Roma dal nobil
Angelo Frangipani. Una in santa Maria Araceli, la quale e dipinta con
lanello in ditto, imperoche egli la dipinse in quello stato, nel quale ne
hebbe di lei prima notitia, & una in S. Agostino: Ecco vi in tutto il voler
vostro satisfatto. Luigi Contarini, Lantiquita di Roma (Venice: 1575), 97v.
The icon in San Sisto was the first to be identified as a Saint Luke icon. See
Hans Belting, Icons and Roman Society in the Twelfth Century, in Italian
Church Decoration of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: Functions, Forms and
Regional Traditions, ed. William Tronzo (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1989), 30. It was later moved to the church of San
Domenico.
53 See Onofrio Panvinio, Le sette chiese principali di Roma, trans. Marco
Antonio Lanfranchi (Rome: 1570), 245.
54 See descriptions of images at San Giovanni Laterano, Santa Maria del
Popolo, Santa Maria in Via Lata, SantAgostino, Santa Maria in Aracoeli,
Santa Maria Nuova, Santa Maria della Consolazione, and the two images in
San Sisto. This number surpasses the seven that he mentions as being those
that pilgrims should and do visit most frequently. Andrea Palladio, Descritione
de le Chiese, Stationi, Indulgenze & Reliquie de Corpi Sancti, che sonno in la Citta de
Roma (Rome: 1554), no page numbers.
55 For a discussion of the maniera greca in sixteenth-century art theory and
criticism, see Andrew Casper, El Greco and Italy: Art, Theory and the
Religious Image of the Late Cinquecento (Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Pennsylvania, 2007), 6073.
56 La palla di S. Domenico, di Iacomello de Flore, che dipinse con
maniera greca diverse opere per la citta. Sansovino, Venetia citta nobilissima et
singolare, 62r.
 57 La palla dellaltare grande e di finissimo argento, ove in 21. quadro di
mezzo relievo si contiene la passione di Christo, dopera Greca. Ibid., 74v.
58 Ora lArchitettura di questo Tempio, famoso, non tanto per grandezza
& larghezza, come sono molti altri in Italia, qua[n]to mirabile per ricchezza,
e di maniera greca. Ibid., 30v.
59 Di rincontro allaltare per fianco, si vede in marmo una Nostra Donna
fatta alla greca. Ibid., 33r.
60 Ibid., 37r.
61 Sono in questo colmo diverse historie della Sacra scrittura, mescolate
anco queste, con diverse profetie, attorno allequali si leggono versi latini in
rima, significanti il contenuto delle pitture, fra le quali quasi tutte fatte a
greca mano, ve ne sono alcune nobilissime lavorate ne te[m]pi nostri.
Ibid., 35r.
62 Ibid., 100r.
63 La parte di dietro della Chiesa simile a San Hieremia, e fatta allusansa
Greca. Ibid., 63v.
64 The much-expanded 1663 edition of Sansovinos guidebook, published
nearly a century after the churchs completion, also keeps the rich interior of
San Giorgio dei Greci unmentioned.
65 For both of these references, see Manolis Chatzidakis, Icones de Saint-
Georges des Grecs et de la collection de lInstitut (Venice: Neri Pozza, 1962), xxxi and
1812, Manolis Chatzidakis, Lopera del pittore Tommaso Bathas e la
Downloaded By: [Miami University Libraries] At: 20:03 29 October 2009
divota maniera greca, Thesaurismata 14 (1977): 23950. See also Thalia
Gouma-Peterson, Crete, Venice, the Madonneri and a Creto-Venetian
Icon in the Allen Art Museum, Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 25 (1968):
64 note 34.
66 Tutte ho vedute essere con marabilarte fornite, eccetto di pitture delle
sacre imagini, le quali erano la maggior parte quadretti di certe figure fatte
alla greca, goffissime, dispiacevole e tutte affumicate, le quali ad ogni altra
cosa parevano esservi state poste, fuori che a muover divotione, overo a fare
ornamento a simil luoghi. Giovanni Battista Armenini, De veri precetti della
pittura (Ravenna: 1586), 188.
67 For example: Lavorando [Cimabue] poi in fresco allo spedale del
Porcellana, sul canto della via Nuova che va in Borgo Ognissanti, nella
facciata dinanzi che ha in mez[z]o la porta principale, da un lato la Vergine
Annunziata da lAngelo e da laltre cose un poco piu vive e naturali e piu
morbide che la maniera de que Greci, tutta piena di line e di proffili cos nel
musaico come nelle pitture; la qual maniera scabrosa e goffa et ordinaria
avevano non mediante lo studio, ma per una cotal usanza insegnato luno
allaltro per molti anni i pittori di que tempi, senza pensar mai a migliorare il
disegno bellezza di colorito o invenzione alcuna che buona fusse. Giorgio
Vasari, Le vite de piu eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e
1568, eds Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi (Florence: Sansoni Editore,
1966), vol. II, 37.
68 Gregorio Comanini, The Figino or On the Purpose of Painting: Art Theory in the
Late Renaissance, eds Giancarlo Maiorino and Ann Doyle-Anderson
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 701.
69 Et a mano drita entrando da la porta grande, vi e una imagine di
Christo a la colo[n]na dipinto da frate Sebastiano Venetiano pittore eccel-
lentiss[imo]. Palladio, Descritione, no page numbers.
70 A man dritta poi nellentrar della porta maggiore vi e una imagine di
Christo alla colonna dipinto da Frate Sebastiano, che una delle belle pitture
che si possi in Roma vedere. Luigi Contarini, Lantiquita di Roma, sito,
imperadori, famiglie, statue, chiese, corpi santi, reliquie, pontefici, & cardinali di essa
(Venice: 1575), 51r. A similar description is found in Palladios Descritione.
71 Alla qual cosa fare gli aiuto grandeme[n]te, molti anni sono lima-
gine di Christo dipinto da Titiano, la quale face[n]do diversi miracoli, fu
frequentata con amplissime limosine e doni, non pur da tutta Venetia, ma
anco dale circo[n]vicine citta. Sansovino, Venetia citta nobilissima et singo-
lare, 102v.
72 Dalla destra in entrando, Titiano vi dipinse quella palla famosa di
Christo, per la quale e fatta ricca la Fraterna, & la Chiesa. Ibid., 71v.
73 Oltre il maggiore vi sono altri 7 altari; tra questi e assai notabile,
& famoso quello di Christo Signore Nostro posto a man manca
imediatamente fuori di essa cappella, per la qual benedetta, e Santa Imagine,
che fu dipinta dal gran Titiano, se fatta ricca, & questa chiesa, & la fraterna
insieme maravigliosamente, havendo fatto essa Imagine infiniti miracoli.
Sansovino, Venetia citta nobilissima, ed. Stringa, 161r.
74 See Goffen, Icon and Vision and Ringbom, Icon to Narrative.
75 Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel, Il Cristo Portacroce della Scuola di
San Rocco e la sua lunetta, Atti dellIstituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti 156
(1998): 687732.
76 For a convincing stylistic and scientific analysis of the lunette (made
possible by a recent restoration) and comparison with works by Titian from
around 1519, see ibid., 72330.
77 Some doubt that this picture had anything to do with the chapel. See
Jaynie Anderson, Christ Carrying the Cross in San Rocco: Its Commission and
Miraculous History, Arte Veneta 31 (1977): 186. There is, additionally, some
dispute whether the chapel of Jacomo de Zuanne ever housed the painting.
See Chiari Moretto Wiel, Il Cristo Portacroce, 710.
78 Giulio Lorenzetti, Per la storia del Cristo Portacroce della chiesa di
San Rocco in Venezia, Venezia, studi di arte e storia a cura della direzione del Museo
Civico Correr 1 (1920): 184 note 5. For the full document, see Chiari Moretto
Wiel, Il Cristo Portacroce, 7101 note 54. Anderson (Christ Carrying the
Cross, 186) claims that this refers not to the painting, but to a miracle-
working crucifix. However, Chiari Moretto Wiel (Il Cristo Portacroce,
7145) overturns this claim.
79 For the full document, see ibid., 715 note 65.
80 Cited in Anderson, Christ Carrying the Cross, 186.
81 Ibid., 187. Numerous printed devotional images of the painting were
produced as a way of extending the power of the original to a wider
audience. See Chiari Moretto Wiel, Il Cristo Portacroce, 693700.
82 Vi si honora parimente il Christo miracoloso situato a mezza Chiesa. a
cui piedi e sepolto quel Titiano che fu celebre nella pittura, fra tutti gli altri
del tempo nostro. Sansovino, Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare, 66r.
83 Lavoro un quadro dun Cristo che porta la croce, et un giudeo lo tira; il
quale col tempo fu posto nella chiesa di Santo Rocco, et oggi per la
devozione che vi hanno molti, fa miracoli, come si vede. Vasari, Le vite, vol.
IV, 456.
84 Per la chiesa di San to Rocco fece, dopo le dette opere, in un quadro,
Cristo con la croce in spalla e con una corda al collo tirata da un Ebreo; la
qual figura, che hanno molti creduta sia di mano di Giorgione, e oggi la
maggiore divozione di Vinezia, et ha avuto di limosine piu scudi che non
hanno in tutta la loro vita guadagnato Tiziano e Giorgione. Ibid., vol. VI,
15960.
85 Those who ascribe the work to Titian include: Sydney Joseph
Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 1500 to 1600 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1993), vol. I, 80, Peter Humfrey, Titian: The Complete Paintings (Ghent: Ludion,
2007), 43, Harold E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian. Vol I: The Religious
Paintings (London: Phaidon, 1969), 80. Wethey also notes that the seven-
teenth-century writers Tizianello (1622), Ridolfi (1648), and Boschini (1674)
all maintain an attribution to Titian. Scholars who assign the painting to
Giorgione include: Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: The Painter of Poetic Brevity
(Paris: Flammarion, 1997), 32 and 303; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the
Renaissance: Venetian School (London: Phaidon, 1957), vol. I, 84; Wolfgang L.
Eller, Giorgione: Catalogue Raisonne. Mystery Unveiled, trans. Ingeborg Elizabeth
Pendl (Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2007), 1404, Paul Joannides, Titian to
1518: The Assumption of Genius (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 20,
Giovanna Nepi Scire  in Paola Parlavecchia, ed., Leonardo & Venice (Milan:
Bompiani, 1992), 3502, Terisio Pignatti, Giorgione: Complete Edition, trans.
Clovis Whitfield (London: Phaidon, 1971), 1134, Terisio Pignatti and Filippo
Pedrocco, Giorgione (New York: Rizzoli, 1999), 190. It is currently on display
in the Sala Superiore of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco as a work by
Giorgione.
86 J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle, Titian: His Life and Times (London:
J. Murray, 1877), vol. I, 601.
87 Lorenzetti, Per la storia del Cristo Portacroce, 2001. This editing
error caused some confusion for later readers. A copy attributed to
113
 Giorgione is mentioned in a letter from Fulvio Orsini to Cardinal Farnese in morte di detto fratello il Cardinale se lha sempre tenuto senza mostralo a
Rome dated 31 August 1579: La pittura, poiche V. S. Ill.ma non ne e cos persona . . . See Lorenzetti, Per la storia del Cristo Portacroce, 189.
informata, le diro come sono quattro mezze figure, delle quali due, le 88 See note 7.
principali, sono un Giudeo che mette il laccio al collo di N. S. sul volto del 89 This subject is discussed in Wil van den Bercken, The Ambiguity
quale e divinita inimitabile et altre discritione eccellenti che lascio hora di of Religious Aesthetics: Reflections on Catholic and Orthodox
scrivere. La forma del quadro e bislunga con la cornice debeno et sara Religious Art, in Aesthetics as a Religious Factor in Eastern and Western
intorno a cinque palmo lungo et tre alto piu o meno. Fu del fratello del Christianity, eds Wil van den Bercken and Jonathan Sutton (Leuven:
Cardinale Lomellino et comprato fu in Venetia gran denaro et dopo la Peeters, 2005), 3751.
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114 ANDREW R. CASPER