{"id":3186,"date":"2024-05-29T13:29:48","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T13:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.basilicasanmarco.it\/the-altars-of-the-15th-century\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T09:48:51","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T09:48:51","slug":"the-altars-of-the-15th-century","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.basilicasanmarco.it\/en\/sculpture\/the-altars-of-the-15th-century\/","title":{"rendered":"The altars of the 15th century"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The altars of the 15th century<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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In the north and south transepts of the basilica are the Renaissance altars of St. Paul and St. James at the sides of the pulpits, created in the second half of the fifteenth century by Antonio Rizzo of Verona. A third altar from the same period and by the same artist is found in the chapel of San Clemente.<\/p>

The three altars were commissioned by the Doge Cristoforo Moro, remembered by an inscription on each altar, and were designed and decorated according to Renaissance forms and models.<\/p>

The altar of the chapel of San Clemente and the altars of San Paolo and San Giacomo, which are located in the north and south transepts of the basilica and are the counterpart of each other in shape, size and location, are commissioned by the Doge Cristoforo Moro (1462-1471). On the three altars an inscription commemorates the Doge who commissioned the work.
The entire work must have been completed before 28 June 1469, the day on which the payment of the fee for the execution of the altars to the young Antonio Rizzo of Verona is recorded, who made his artistic debut with the most prestigious commission in the field of sculpture then available in Venice.<\/p>

The presence of Saint Bernardino of Siena, a Franciscan preacher saint, with Saint Mark at either side of the Madonna, in the altar of San Clemente testifies to the Doge’s special devotion to the recently canonized saint.
The current arrangement of the relief of the Madonna and Child<\/i> , with the two saints, was modified around 1810, with the insertion in the lower part of a relief of the Doge Andrea Gritti venerating Saint Nicholas, sculpted in 1523 by an anonymous artist for the chapel of Saint Nicholas in the Doge’s Palace.<\/p>

In the altars of Saints James and Paul, the statues of the saints are surrounded by Renaissance tabernacles.
Rizzo was among the first to use pilasters, an entablature and a lunette for his altars, the latter placed to frame the altarpiece.<\/p>

The greater variety of areas and profiles of the altar of St. Paul suggests a later dating of this work than that of St. James: in the first work, the uneven distribution of the weight of the Saint’s body is much more evident due to a pronounced imbalance of the axis of the pelvis and a more marked projection of the raised leg. The opposite rotation of St. Paul’s head and shoulders produces a slight torsion in his body, while the figure of St. James is still conditioned by the closed geometries of the cubic stone block used for its carving.
The drapery of both statues, as well as of the Madonna and St. Mark from the altar of San Clemente, betrays the influence of Paduan art from around 1450. The Conversion of Saint Paul, on the other hand, is indebted to Florentine art: the so-called “schiacciato” technique, that is, a flattened relief; the simulation of atmospheric perspective; and the dissolution of the terrain by means of a carpet of clouds, all devices that today can only be admired in old images, suggest that Rizzo had seen Donatello’s Florentine reliefs.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The altars of the 15th century In the north and south transepts of the basilica are the Renaissance altars of St. Paul and St. James at [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":3187,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3186","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilicasanmarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilicasanmarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilicasanmarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilicasanmarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilicasanmarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilicasanmarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3188,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilicasanmarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3186\/revisions\/3188"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilicasanmarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilicasanmarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}