Commemorative effigy of Giovanni di Giorgio Emo

The statue, sculpted in calcareous stone which may perhaps be identified as Istria stone, portrays the SuperintendentGiovanni di Giorgio Emo, member of a noble Venetian family.

Emo was a senator several times, he was sent as an ambassador to Hungary, to Constantinople and Florence, and was later appointed general superintendent in the war against Ferrara. He died in 1483 from a wound received in battle.

The effigy of the superintendent, which is unfinished on the rear, was originally part of the tomb dedicated to him, located in the chapel of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Venice, realised in 1493. In 1810 the church and the adjoining convent were suppressed and the entire monumental complex was destroyed in 1812. Deprived of its original location, the statue was bought, in 1818, by the Vicenza nobleman Girolamo Egidio Di Velo and on his death it arrived, along with the other items from his personal collection, in the Civic Art Gallery.

The sarcophagus against which the statue once leant and the entire architectural structure of the funerary monument, probably designed by Tullio Lombardo, have been lost. The stone case (S 1) on which the superintendent’s statue now stands is not therefore part of the original group.

Emo’s sullen look is striking: the frowning eyebrows and the line of the eyes are typical elements of the style of Antonio Rizzo, who carved the head of the statue. Instead the rest of the body may have been done by an artist from the workshop of the Veronese sculptor.