In search of a lost “Eve”: from the tomb of doge Andrea Vendramin to the Brenzoni gardens on Lake Garda

CYCLE: Research in Progress
SPEAKER: Francesco Caglioti
DATE: Thursday, July 2, 6:00 PM

For nearly half a millennium, Villa Guarienti di Brenzone at Punta San Vigilio, on Lake Garda, has served as a surprising open-air antiquarian museum. Here, its founder, Agostino Brenzoni, shrewdly arranged various thematic areas around sculptures procured in Venice from the remains of the most admired early Renaissance workshops. These were reused as pseudo-antiquities—left physically untouched, but with their subjects transformed solely through the power of the poetic word inscribed on accompanying plaques.
Having previously demonstrated that three of these marbles originate from Giovanni Dalmata's never-installed altar for the chapter house of the Scuola Grande di San Marco in Venice (1498–1500), the author now illustrates the provenance of a Carrara marble "Venus." This statue originated from the tomb of Doge Andrea Vendramin (formerly in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi and now in Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice). A celebrated masterpiece by Tullio Lombardo (c. 1490–1495), the tomb was intended to feature this statue as "Eve," though it was ultimately never included.

Francesco Caglioti is Full Professor of Medieval Art History at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, where he also serves as the coordinator of the PhD program in History of Art. His studies and publications focus primarily on the Italian Late Middle Ages and Renaissance across their major centers (Florence, Siena, Lucca, Bologna, Milan, Padua, Venice, Rome, Naples, Messina, Palermo), with a special emphasis on monumental sculpture. In 2019, along with colleague Andrea De Marchi (University of Florence), he curated the exhibition Verrocchio, Leonardo’s Master for Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence; in 2022, he was the sole curator of the exhibition Donatello, the Renaissance at the same venues.