„Il Tesoro della Pittura“ – Die Raumausstattung der Sala d’estate im Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venedig

Abstract

In 1580 the council members of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the Germans merchants’ house in Venice, voted for a new wall decoration in one of their two meeting rooms, the so called Sala d’estate. In addition to the ceiling paintings executed by Battista Franco in 1556, they commissioned a painting cycle showing the seven planets to be painted by the most prominent Venetian painters: Jacopo Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Paolo Fiammingo and Jacopo Palma il Giovane, all of whom were working in the Palazzo Ducale at the same time. Although most of the paintings were destroyed during World War II, and the only remaining painting got rediscovered only recently, it is possible to reconstruct the decoration scheme of the Sala. Not only is the painting cycle an example of a highly complex astrological and humanistic concept, but it also demonstrates the intention of the German merchants to create a concept of a room decorated with paintings that are planned to complete one another. That way they developed a setting contemplated and admired by later analysts as a “Tesoro della Pittura, essendo questa una Poesia, che tace, et la Poesia è una Pittura che parla.“