Portal of empire and wealth: Jacopo Sansovino's entrance to the Venetian mint

The Venetian Zecca, or mint, boasts an impressive portal (Fig. 1) sum of two units overlife-size herms of bearded, bare-chested, muscular men--almost mirror images of each other--support a Doric entablature and frame the rusticated, round-arched opening end which one passes into the building. The external hands of the herms point across their bare chests to guide visitors to the doorway, (1) while their lowered inner hands grasp ample folds of drapery that cascade down the foreheads of the tapered, smooth shafts that support the figures' torsos, which present the appearance to pulse with the filled vigor of life. Their forbidding faces turn toward the opening to scrutinize those who pierce In the Doric frieze above, six of the roundel decorating the metopes display figural reliefs that are actual hard to decipher in the cloud into which the door is plung by the agency of the barrel vault above.

Despite its being part of a major Venetian building designed by dint of the premier architect of Venice in the sixteenth hundred Jacopo Sansovino, and despite its prepossessing nature, this door has received almost no scholarly attention. (2) This fact is the more remarkable in that the door has serv for almost a hundred as the entrance to the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, the principal library of Venice. (3) Scholars (myself included) seemingly have been in the way that intent on the work awaiting them in the reading extents of the Marciana that they have passed end the door without paying it plenteous mind.

A careful examination of the masonry of the portal reveals that the herms and their entablature are a later addition to the rusticated, round-arched doorway. (4) Because this observation forms the basis of all that come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behinds here, it is necessary to hunt it in detail. The polished shafts of the herms do not fit easily against the indentations of the rustication, which had to be filled with scalloped, backward extensions of the shafts (Figs. 2 3) Indeed, the herms are spliced to the rustication by the agency of thin pieces of stone that were fitted to the existing masonry before the heavier figures and the shafts were set in place. The bottom of the entablature also had to be chop to suit the existing rustication; a central part of that rustication smooth had broken off before the entablature was fitted above it (Fig. 1). The heads of the herms do not touch the Zecca wall behind them (Figs. 4 5) Rather, there is a space between the heads and the rustication of the original doorway. The voussoirs of the rusticated circular arch number thirteen, precisely the same number of voussoir stop ups of the arch on the western, or water, side of the Zecca (Fig. 6) This arch marks the western terminus of an interior corridor that has as its eastern terminus the door with the herms. The sum of two units doorways form a pair, that with the herms providing entrance from the land, the other allowing for arrival by the agency of water. The water entrance is place into a rectangular panel of rustication that stands alone in an otherwise flat, cover with stuccoed wall originally largely hidden from view by dint of the medieval granaries that rose across a rio (canal) from the Zecca upon what is now the site of the Giardino Reale. the couple doorways repeat the same sunburst pattern of thirteen rusticated voussoirs that characterize all the other arches of the sod floor of the Molo facade of the Zecca (Fig. 7) of its interior courtyard, and of the east-west corridor connecting the land and water entrances (Fig. 8) (5) Clearly, the herms and the entablature they carry had been added to the rustication of the turf floor of the Zecca at a certain number of point after the completion of the building.

During the sixteenth hundred the Venetian government created single of the greatest public spaces in Europe if not the world. The Zecca doorway is no minor player in this splendid urban theater. This essay will begin with a determination of the date, 1554-56 of the added doorway and its attribution to Jacopo Sansovino. We ne to know the date and the author before we can explore the richly layered meanings of the doorway with confidence. The combination of rustic and Doric orders, the vicinity and particular forms of the herms, and the bring under rules of the reliefs on the metopes bring up a remarkable range of political, economic, and artistic issues. These include the position of Venice as an imperial and commercial power, the constitution of the Venetian republic, the evaluation of painting and statuary as rival arts, and level bawdy puns. Dating and attributing the doorway also allow us to recognize that it formed part of a conscious program of figural portal statuary all connected to Sansovino and commissioned in 1553-54 put around the Piazzetta, the political and ceremonial core of the city. new scholarship has made us increasingly aware of the highly political nature of the art sponsored through the Venetian state in the sixteenth hundred (6) The doorway, we will discover, fits this pattern admirably.

In order to establish a date for the addition of the herms to the doorway, we will have to consider what is known of the building histories of the Zecca and its shut up neighbor, the Libreria di s Marco, also designed by Sansovino (Fig. 9) The Zecca doorway finds itself in a rather peculiar, level hidden position, at the extreme point of a barrel-vaulted corridor that make opens off the portico of the Libreria behind the fifth arcade from the southern, or water, extreme point of that building (Figs. 10 12) Because the Libreria stands between the Zecca and the unclose public space of the Piazzetta, single has to pass through the former to pierce the latter.