The convergence of public and private interests: Titian, the Vendramin and the Venetian relic of the True Cross.

摘要

Titian's painting The Vendramin Family venerating a Relic of the True Cross, painted in 1547 for the merchant Gabriele Vendramin, reveals the Vendramin family's proprietary relationship to the relic of the True Cross that also had currency within the larger worlds of Venetian politics and devotion. The investment of the Vendramin in the relic and the broader perceptions of this object as a vessel with potency in social, political, and religious contexts, make evident the permeability of what are often ascribed as rigid and radically separate "public" and "private" domains. Those who came to "possess" the relic of the True Cross fashioned its meaning through the context in which it was viewed. Through the True Cross relic's portability a network of links were established between the Titian painting, the lay confraternity of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, and the Venetian Republic that displays the permeability of these historiographically separate spheres.