Venetian Miracles of the Holy Cross

In the days of the Venetian Republic, one of the most important aspects of the city’s religious life was a group of large and prestigious confraternities known as the “scuole grandi – the great schools.” These associations engaged in a wide variety of devotional and charitable activities, and each of them had a large hall on which these activities were centered.

The entrance to the Scuola Grande of St John the Evangelist. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The interior of the upper hall, constructed in 1544. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, CC BY 2.0)

In 1369, the scuola grande of St John the Evangelist, one of the oldest in the city, was given a relic of the True Cross, which soon became known for the miracles it effected. At the end of the 15th century, the confraternity commissioned a group of painters to make a series of panels celebrating nine of these miracles, which were to be displayed in the large hall where the relic was kept. One of these, a work by Raphael’s teacher Perugino (1446-1523), has been lost, but the other eight survive. Three were painted by Gentile Bellini (1429 ca. - 1507), scion of a family of painters who had long been among the most successful in the city; the rest are by artists who were in various ways his students or associates, who also assisted Bellini to varying degrees with his own canvases. (It is no small testament to the prestige which Perugino enjoyed throughout Italy in the late 15th century that he was invited to participate in this project, even though he was not a Venetian.) In 1797, the arch-criminal Napoleon, enemy of God and the Faith, overthrew the Republic and closed the scuole, whose properties were then plundered and dispersed; since 1820, the paintings have been displayed at the Galleria dell’ Accademia.

1. The Miraculous Healing of a Madman at the Rialto Bridge, ca. 1495, by Vittore Carpaccio (1460/65 - 1525 ca.) The principal scene, in the upper left part of the painting, shows the healing of a madman by the relic of the True Cross, which is held by Francesco Querini, Patriarch of Grado (1367-72) when the relic came to Venice. (From the time of its foundation in 774, the see of Venice was suffragan to the Patriarchate of Grado, a town roughly 55 miles to the east along the edge of the Adriatic. In 1451, shortly after St Lawrence Giustiniani was appointed bishop of Venice, the pope transferred the title of the patriarchate to his see.) This takes place on the loggia of a palace near the famous Rialto Bridge; most of the painting is taken up with the view of the surrounding area, a very busy scene very much to the taste of the times in Venice, as also seen in the remaining paintings. (The wooden bridge seen here collapsed in 1524; the central section of this older structure was movable so that taller ships could get up the canal.)

2. The Miracle in the Campo San Lio, ca. 1495, by Giovanni Mansueti (flor. 1485-1527). During the funeral procession of a member of the confraternity who had been but little devoted to the Holy Cross, the relic suddenly became too heavy to carry, until it was handed over to the parish priest.

3. The Relic of the True Cross is Given to the Scuola Grande of St John the Evangelist, ca. 1495, by Lazzaro Bastiani (1429-1512). This picture is an important record of the appearance of the confraternity’s complex before a number of subsequent renovations. The relic had previously belonged to a French Carmelite named Pierre de Thomas (1305-66), who was the papal legate to “the churches of the East” from 1357 until his death. When he died on the island of Cyprus, it passed to Philippe de Mézières, the chancellor of the Kingdom of Cyprus and Jerusalem, the successor state to the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem; it was de Mézières who in turn gave it to the confraternity.

4. A Miracle During the Procession on St Mark’s Day, 1496, by Gentile Bellini. On April 25th, the feast of Venice’s Patron Saint, the Evangelist Mark, the scuole grandi and many other pious associations would participate in a grand procession in front of the famous basilica that houses his relics. (In the days of the Republic, San Marco was not the cathedral of Venice, but the chapel of the doge and his court.) The members of the Scuola Grande of St John are seen in the lower middle of the painting, carrying the relic under a baldachin. Underneath the relic, a plaque is mounted into the pavement of the piazza, which commemorates the procession of 1444, during which a merchant from Brescia named Jacop de’ Salis knelt down and prayed before the relic, and his gravely injured son was immediately healed. This painting is also an important historical record of the mosaics on the façade of the basilica, and the older brick pavement of the piazza.

5. The Miracle at the Bridge of San Lorenzo, 1500, by Gentile Bellini. Sometime between 1370 and 1382, the relic accidentally fell off this bridge during a procession, but rather than sinking into the water, it hovered above it. Several people waded into the water to recover it, but it evaded their hands, and could only be grasped by the guardian of the scuola, a man named Andrea Vendramin.

6. The Healing of Pietro dei Ludovici, 1501, by Gentile Bellini. Inside the confraternity’s church, a man suffering from a kind of malaria known as quartan fever (a fever that recurs every three or four days) is healed by touching the relic.

7. The Healing of the Daughter of Benvegnudo di San Polo, 1501, by Giovanni Mansueti. A young girl is healed from an illness which she had suffered from since birth by the touch of three candles which her father, a member of the confraternity, had touched to the relics of the Cross.

8. The Healing of a Child Fallen out of a Window, 1505-10, by Benedetto Rusconi (1460-1525), known as il Diana. This is the most recent of the miracles depicted in this series; on March 10, 1480, the son of a public official named Alvise Finetti fell out of a window, but was healed of his injuries by the touch of the relic.