Marble Altarpiece of the Ecce Homo, ca. 1525
Palazzo Minelli Spada, Venice

In the chapel of the Casa Cardinal Piazza in Venice, now a retirement home administered by the Venetian Curia, is an altarpiece carved in high relief from pietra tenera di Vicenza, representing a half-length Christ as a Man of Sorrows, standing inside a sarcophagus, adored by two angels.
After a century of constant displacement from the Arsenal to the crypt, treasury and baptistry of the basilica of St. Mark, to the bhapel of St. Theodore behind St. Mark’s, the carved stone altarpiece of the Ecce Homo adored by angels, found a permanent site in 1960 in the oratory of the retirement home. There, the altarpiece, unknown to the history of Venetian art, was discovered by Dr. Anne Markham Schulz and recognised as a work of circa 1525 by the famous sculptor Gianmaria Mosca. Research by Dr. Schulz suggests that it was originally made for the church of the Venetian Convent of the Vergini, suppressed by Napoleonic decree in the early 19th century.