Portrait of Andrea Vendramin, Doge of Venice, with His Brother Luca and an Unidentified Papal Nuncio

Author: Albert Elen

The figure on the left in the foreground is immediately identified by his ermine cloak and corno (hat) as the Doge of Venice – the holder of the highest office in the Venetian Republic. It is clear from the family arms on the sumptuously decorated gold brocade cloth hanging over the windowsill that this is Andrea Vendramin (1393-1478). This immensely wealthy nobleman, a member of a leading Venetian merchant family, was eighty when he was elected in 1476. He died from the plague two years later, so his period in office was short. This means that the drawing can be dated fairly accurately – unless it was made posthumously, which is unlikely given the highly individual, life-like features.

This impressive image of the doge and an unknown papal nuncio is in fact a large miniature, executed in various tints of bodycolour with gold leaf on vellum. It is not inconceivable that the drawing once adorned a full page in a precious manuscript, perhaps a family chronicle from which it was later cut out.^[1] It is quite possible that there was a chronicle of this kind in the famous collection of Gabriele Vendramin (1484-1552), grandson of the doge’s brother and heir, Luca Vendramin (d. 1527). Among other things, he owned countless drawings, albums and illuminated manuscripts.^[2] The stern-faced man behind the doge has until now been regarded as his secretary, but this position would not explain his presence. It could, though, very likely be his brother Luca, who may also have commissioned this double portrait and the possible family chronicle.

Depicting people in profile was popular at that time, as we see in another Belliniesque drawing, now attributed to Francesco Bonsignori (c.1455-1519), also in the Koenigs Collection (inv. I 197). The three people in our drawing are shown behind a beautifully ornamented window, with their arms and hands hidden, so their expressions can only be read from their faces. Given the unusual way the event was pictured, the meeting between the doge and the papal nuncio was evidently the highlight of his brief time in office. It could have been on the occasion of the presentation of the Golden Rose that Pope Sixtus IV gave Vendramin for his generosity to the poor. This prestigious ecclesiastical award was reserved for only the most virtuous of rulers and was consequently an exclusive status symbol for an elected head of state and his family. Although the pope’s envoy is not actually presenting anything here – the two men’s lower arms cannot be seen – on the prominently placed cloth hanging immediately below them there are two stylized gold-embroidered flowers above Vendramin’s family coat of arms.

The drawing has been variously attributed to the brothers Giovanni (c.1430-1516) and Gentile Bellini, as well as to their cousin Leonardo Bellini (c.1423/1425-c.1500/1510) and even to the mysterious Jacometto Veneziano (d. 1497).^[3] Leonardo was the leading miniaturist in the 1460 to 1480 period, but more traditional in style than the maker of the Rotterdam group portrait. The attribution to Gentile seems the most plausible, to go by the high quality and the likeness to portraits he made of important people, particularly of Vendramin’s successor, Doge Giovanni Mocenigo (1478-85) and his opponent, the Ottoman Sultan Mohammed II in 1480. The sitters in them are likewise portrayed en buste and in full profile and three-quarter profile respectively; in the sultan’s case, moreover, there is a fine architectural surround with a richly decorated cloth hanging over the windowsill.^[4]

Heinemann (1991) is convinced of the attribution to Gentile, but is the only author to regard the drawing as being a portrait of the earlier doge, Niccolò Marcello (1473-74). There is however an insufficient resemblance to the famous (supposed) portrait (after Gentile Bellini), now in London, which is the only known one of this doge.^[5]