Corporate Colors: Bonifacio and Tintoretto at the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi in Venice

(46.) For the patronage of Tintoretto's work, see Moschini Marconi, vol. 2, cat. no. 401.

(47.) For the association of this work with Dolce's description of "Santa Margherita a cavallo del Serpente," see Luigi Coletti, Il Tintoretto (Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d'Arti Grafiche, 1940), 21. Mark Roskill, however, has hesitated over the attribution. See Roskill, Dolce's Aretino and Venetian Art Theory in the Cinquecento (New York: New York University Press, 1968), 286.

(48.) For the reconstruction of this wall, see Boschini, 268--69; Moschini Marconi, vol. 2, cat. nos. 98, 107, 403; and Faggin, 89--90.

(49.) The following observations should be made with regard to my partial reconstruction of the decoration of the first room of the Camerlenghi di Comun (Fig. 23): on the evidence provided by the dimensions of those works that have survived, it is impossible to see how the sequence of paintings described by Boschini could be accommodated by the physical space that exists today. See Boschini, 265--66. In 1977, Kleinschmidt hypothesized a reconstruction based on an interpretation of Boschini's testimony, but as she failed to take account of the dimensions of the two chambers, the arrangement she described is unsustainable. See Kleinschmidt, 110--11. My reconstruction relies on the assumption that the present partition wall, which is now broken by a glazed partition that runs a third of its length from floor to ceiling, was originally solid all the way along above the height of the central door frame, leaving a smaller space for a prefabricated partition below. Kleinschmidt assumed that the modern glass partitio n that currently exists blocks an original point of access. This cannot be the case, as this would render the doorway to the immediate right (an original feature and one that appears directly underneath The Madonna of the Treasurers in the accompanying reconstruction, Fig. 23) redundant. If we accept that there was originally a solid space, the length of the upper portion of the wall would subsequently amount to about 30 feet (9 meters), forming an area perfectly suited to the combined lengths of The Madonna of the Treasurers and its flanking paintings. If we can establish these three paintings in this position, then Boschini's sequential description of this room, starting with the lost Annunciation with Treasurers on the adjacent, entrance wall, finally makes sense. However, a problem surrounds the incorporation of Carpaccio's Lion of Saint Mark. Boschini, 265, refers to this painting as attributable to "Donato [or "Donatello"] Veneziano." A long-standing tradition associates this work with Carpaccio's paint ing now on display in the Sala del Volte at the Palazzo Ducale. Mindful of Boschini's tendency to give an accurate attribution, the confusion between Donato and Carpaccio is problematic, but it is possible that he was in error, given that the dimensions of the painting in question exactly match the space allotted for it in the hypothetical arrangement presented in Figure 23. Dated 1516, it seems to have been an original part of the decoration of this office space before the integration of the palace took place in the late 1520s. As suggested by Kleinschmidt, 118, Boschini may have confused the painting by Carpaccio with a Lion of Saint Mark signed and dated by Donato Bragadin in 1459 that was part of the decoration of the Avrogaria at the Palazzo Ducale. For the history of Tintoretto's surviving works from this room, see also Moschini Marconi, vol. 2, 411, 416.