From Venice, Andrea Mantegna's St. Sebastian on loan to Mantua's Ducal Palace

From April 12, 2025, the Doge’s Palace in Mantua will welcome Andrea Mantegna ’s Saint Sebastian from the Giorgio Franchetti Gallery at the Ca’ d’Oro in Venice. Documented in 1506 at the heirs of the great painter, who painted it in the last years of his life, the painting arrived in the collection of Pietro Bembo in Padua, then passed into the collection of the physician Antonio Scarpa; it was in 1893 that the work was destined by Baron Giorgio Franchetti, its last owner, for the late Gothic Venetian building overlooking the Grand Canal, which he purchased to be used as a public museum.

Mantegna’s Saint Sebastian stands out from its niche as a polychrome statue, his mouth open in a silent, tragic expression of suffering. This intense and dramatic work conveys a strong emotional involvement on the part of the artist, almost as if it were a spiritual legacy of the master, who was now elderly, perhaps scarred by personal events and close to death on September 13, 1506.

Mantegna died in Mantua, the city where he lived and worked for nearly fifty years in the service of the Gonzaga family, contributing to the prestige of the court with memorable works. These include the Camera Picta (or Bridal Chamber), frescoed entirely by the artist in the northeast tower of Mantua Castle. A masterpiece that enhances the Renaissance court, brought to life through the skillful use of perspective and references to antiquity. It is surprising how two works by the same 15th-century artist can be so different. On the one hand, the classical composure of the Camera Picta; on the other, the melancholy lament of Saint Sebastian. Two opposing approaches to light and the Renaissance: the celebratory luminosity of the fresco contrasts with the twilight drama of the Venetian painting.

This extraordinary loan is the result of a collaboration between the Regional Directorate National Museums of Veneto and the Doge’s Palace in Mantua, and is due to the need to temporarily close the Venetian museum for structural and plant upgrading work, as part of a wide-ranging restoration and refurbishment project for the Gallery, supported by the Venetian Heritage Foundation. The conservation work offers a unique opportunity: to compare two absolute masterpieces by Mantegna in the same city where the Saint Sebastian was also painted. The work will in fact be displayed in the Camera dei Soli, next to the Camera Picta, creating an artistic dialogue between two masterpieces of the Renaissance genius.

“In conjunction with the start of plant works that will impose, starting in April, a temporary closure of all the internal rooms of the museum, with inevitable movements of many works in the collection,” said Daniele Ferrara, director of the Regional Directorate National Museums of Veneto, “the absolute masterpiece of Ca’ d’Oro will return, so to speak, to its city of origin, triggering a valuable opportunity for close collaboration between two important Italian museum institutions belonging to the unified National Museum System coordinated by the Ministry of Culture.”

“The exceptional move, aimed at guaranteeing the widest possible enjoyment of the painting during the ongoing work in the Gallery, will provide an opportunity,” added Claudia Cremonini, director of the Giorgio Franchetti Gallery, “for a thorough conservative review of the canvas before its definitive relocation inside the so-called ’Mantegna Chapel,’ scheduled for late summer at the end of the restoration work on the small room.”

“To Daniele Ferrara, Claudia Cremonini and Toto Bergamo Rossi, director of the Venetian Heritage Foundation, which is supporting the entire restoration and renovation project at the Venetian museum,” said Stefano L’Occaso, director of Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, “goes my sincere gratitude for this stellar loan. The St. Sebastian, which struck the imagination of Gabriele D’Annunzio, Thomas Stearns Eliot, as well as José Saramago, will be presented together with the new lighting system of the Bridal Chamber, which is being built thanks to a sponsorship from Gigi Events Srl. Gigi Events Srl’s sponsorship includes the lighting design by Francesco Murano and Yin Jiaqi and the installation design by Luisa Quintiliani and Orsola De Fiori, as well as the supply of the lighting system components. A solar chamber and a lunar painting will tell us about the peaks of an absolute protagonist of the Renaissance.”

From Venice, Andrea Mantegna's St. Sebastian on loan to Mantua's Ducal Palace

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