Portals of the Sala dell’Albergo, Portal to the Treasury and Great Window in the Upper Hall of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco
Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice

Venetian Heritage funded the restoration of the Portals of the Sala dell’Albergo, Portal to the Treasury, and Great Window in the Upper Hall of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. The Sala dell’Albergo is famous for housing Jacopo Tintoretto’s Crucifixion, the masterpiece he completed in 1564. The monumental entrance portal to the Sala dell’Albergo, created in the mid-1500s, is richly carved and decorated with precious marbles. The architectural structure is in Istrian stone, whilst the bases of the columns and capitals are in Carrara marble; their shafts are probably Greek marble. In the lunette, the pilaster, the spandrels, and around the upper curvilinear gable are inserts of precious marbles (porphyry, rosso antico, serpentine, verde antico, Egyptian breccia, Aquitanian black and white marble, and Medicea breccia). The entrance portal to the Treasury, where the Scuola’s precious reliquaries are housed, is carved entirely in Istrian stone. Large volutes support the architrave, which is decorated with an opulent festoon of fruit and leaves in a style typical of Sansovino. The mullioned window in the Upper Hall is furnished with three Greek marble columns; the architectural structure is in Istrian stone, whilst a strip of marble frames the monumental composition. The portal of the Sala dell’Albergo, like that of the Treasury and the mullioned window, was in a moderate state of conservation. The stone surfaces were tarnished by powdery deposits and were blackened, probably because of former treatments with oils, waxes and grease. The restoration brought to light the high quality of the polychrome marbles.