Funerary monument of Alessandro Vittoria

By 1601 Vittoria had begun the concessionary process to have a funerary monument (which he designed and partially executed himself) and a floor tomb in San Zaccaria, a highly prestigious convent, close to his home. He produced a particularly fine memorial for himself with his self-portrait. It is not only the lapidary Latin inscription that explains the program (in English: Alessandro Vittoria, who, when alive, drew living countenances from marble). It is accompanied by personifications of architecture, sculpture, and painting.

In the floor of the church, on Vittoria’s tombstone, the visitor then deciphers a Latin inscription speaking of hope and redemption.

It is rather wonderful that within San Zaccaria one finds two deeply personal works which so aptly bookend Vittoria’s glittering career in Venice: his treasured first independent commission, the marble statuette of St John the Baptist, and his last work, his own funerary monument.