Two designs were turned down for being too elaborate before this one was accepted. The parish committee raised the money; the city added two hundred lire, the sum it gave to everyone.
At a glance
A memorial in the shape of a small architecture — two Corinthian columns, an entablature and a pediment — fixed to the red plastered flank of the church of Santi Apostoli, to the left of the side door. The relief is Carrara marble, the surround Istrian stone; two bronze lamps and a bronze shield complete it. Between the dates 1915 and 1918, a winged Victory leans over a soldier. Below her, in two columns, more than forty men of the parish are listed with their ranks.
Key facts
- Sculptor: Annibale De Lotto (1877–1932)
- Installed: 1924
- Commissioned by: the Comitato pro-lapide dei Santissimi Apostoli
- Public money: 200 lire, the customary municipal contribution
- Materials: Carrara marble relief, Istrian stone surround, bronze lamps and shield, iron fittings
- Where: right-hand flank of the church, left of the side door, Campo Santi Apostoli, Cannaregio
- GPS: 45.44038, 12.33678 · Open in Google Maps
History
The record of this memorial is unusually complete, and what it shows is a committee arguing. Antonio De Bei submitted two designs in high relief; both were rejected by the commission as too complex. De Lotto’s project was presented in April 1924 and accepted. Where to put it was argued over too: the main front was considered, and so was the foot of the bell tower, before the lateral wall was settled on.
The money came the way it usually came. A parish committee — the Comitato pro-lapide dei Santissimi Apostoli — collected it, and the municipality added the customary two hundred lire, the same contribution it made to parish after parish across the city in those years. The state did not pay for these stones. The neighbours did.
Annibale De Lotto was from Cadore and worked in Venice; his memorial for the parish of San Luca, of 1922, uses the same subject, a winged Victory honouring a soldier, and is now in the national catalogue of historic and artistic property.
What you see
The white of the marble against the red of the wall, first of all, and then the fact that the thing is built rather than hung: columns, capitals, a cornice, a pediment with two scrolls, as though a doorway had been set into the flank of the church with names where the door should be. The Victory is carved deep enough to throw a shadow across the soldier below her. Two bronze lamps hang under the list on iron brackets, and the barred windows of the church stand on either side, so the memorial reads as the one panel of wall that was given something to say.
Nearby
- Chiesa dei Santi Apostoli — the church the memorial is fixed to
- Campiello de la Cason — sixty metres away, behind the Strada Nova
Sources
- Pietre della Memoria, Lapide ai Caduti nella Grande Guerra della parrocchia dei Santi Apostoli (Venezia), census record 177307, compiled by Jonathan Glixon — pietredellamemoria.it: the sculptor, the 1924 date, the materials, the position on the church, the commissioning committee, the 200-lire contribution, the rejected De Bei designs and the argument over placement
- Catalogo generale dei Beni Culturali, record 0500358719: Annibale De Lotto (1877–1932) and his 1922 memorial for the parish of San Luca, Allegoria della Vittoria che premia un soldato, in Carrara marble
- The memorial itself, read from the contributed photograph
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