Virgins to the Rescue: Veronese’s Decoration of the Church of San Sebastiano

• In Event: Veronese Revealed: Save Venice Inc. at the Church of San Sebastiano II

Abstract

Venice is intimately identified with a variety of chaste, virtuous and iconographically rich females — Old and New Testament, mythological and allegorical — who share many of their most important attributes. During the sixteenth century, Venice also witnessed a proliferation of living virtuous virgins, renown for their mystical and prophetic powers and popular with prominent patricians, who believed that Venice would usher in a new golden age and universal Christendom — a new Rome. The restoration work at San Sebastiano demonstrates how Veronese was perfectly suited to the task of setting Venice on a new artistic course, promulgating a new art that that broke with Vasari’s hegemony of central Italian artists and created a new visual language that spoke of Venice as the spiritual hope for the future.

Author

• Sonia H. Evers, Independent Scholar