Mosaic, St Mark's, Venice: The Doge, Clergy, and People of Venice

Ruskin met the young Italian artist Angelo Alessandri Venice during the winter of 1876-77. A friend of the architect and preservationist Giacomo Boni, Alessandri was already producing scenic drawings of Venice before being taken on by Ruskin to copy in watercolour the mosaics of St. Mark’s and works by the Venetian Old Masters such as Tintoretto and Carpaccio. He later became a Professor of Art in Venice, and was the last survivor of Ruskin’s circle in Venice.

Ruskin commissioned three copies of this damaged mosaic after 1877, from Charles Fairfax Murray and T.M. Rooke (both now in the Guild of St George collection at Sheffield), and this one from the young Italian artist Angelo Alessandri. One of the minor subjects in the chancel, this was one of Ruskin’s favourites among the mosaics of St Mark’s.

To him it represented a self-portrait of the Venetians “at their greatest time”, in the twelfth century: “these were the people of Venice in the central time of her unwearied life, her unsacrificed honour, her unabated power, and sacred faith”. As such, he thought it “the most precious historical picture . . . of any in worldly gallery, or unworldly cloister, east or west.” “So far as features could be rendered in the rude time, the faces are all noble . . . for the most part, dark-eyed, but the Doge brown-eyed and fair-haired, the long tresses falling on his shoulders, and his beard braided like that of an Etruscan king.” (St Mark’s Rest)