The Frame Blog

The recent sale, Exceptional in Australia, held by Artvisory on 19^th September 2023 in Melbourne, included a magnificent giltwood trophy frame with a striking array of carved figures, banners, military accoutrements, and two snarling dragons supporting the base.

A giltwood trophy frame celebrating the 16^th century victory of the Venetian fleets over those of the Ottoman Empire, 18^th century, 190 x 150 cm., Artvisory, Exceptional in Australia, Melbourne, 19 September 2023, Lot 47

The underlying structure of this frame is a version of an 18^th century Venetian Rococo design – a panel frame, the principal moulding of which is either an ogee or (as here) a convex cushion.

Examples of 18^th century Venetian panel frames: the outer, with a spiral ribbon at the back edge, an ogee with shaped and textured panels carved with strapwork cartouches and floral rinceaux between mirrored panels, and a foliate frill at the sight edge; the inner, on a portrait attrib. to Pietro Rotari (1707-62), with a spiral ribbon at the back edge, a convex moulding with shaped panels holding foliate rinceaux between mirrored panels, with a spiral leaf moulding at the sight edge

Detail of the trophy frame showing the mouldings of the main rectilinear structure

The structural rails of the trophy frame have raked and centred leaves alternating with gadroons at the back edge, and a central convex cushion moulding with shaped and textured panels containing military trophies between mirrored panels.  The convex moulding was evidently chosen instead of an ogee both for ease of working and in order to emphasize the military trophies, which are pushed forward by the design.

Venetian school, Portrait of the patrician Pietro Barbarigo, 18^th century, in frame carved with the figures of Patriotism, Charity, Constancy, Magnanimity, Prudence, Justice & Faith, & detail, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice. Photo: with thanks to Aidan O’Boyle

Detail of the trophy frame showing the openwork foliate scrolls attached to the outer edge

Although the military trophy frame appears to have little to do with this vast and over-decorated 18^th century Venetian Rococo frame in the Ca’ Rezzonico, which dwarfs the portrait it contains, the elements of both have much in common. The Ca’ Rezzonico frame has a solid inner structure (although much more like a French Rococo frame, with an S-scrolling contour and shaped sight edge) to which clings a pierced, openwork superstructure of foliate scrolls, supporting figures and trophies carved in deep relief or almost in the round, exactly as is the case with the military trophy frame. The lightness of the latter is typical of Venetian Rococo, and achieves a far more successful union of an ‘ordinary’ carved moulding frame in the style with highly-developed figural sculptures and well-composed groups of trophies.

Description of the figures and trophies

At the crest of the frame are three naked and shackled figures, carved in the round and seated on a military trophy of banners, trumpets, a cannon, a drum, corselet, shields and various weapons, seemingly representing the men and equipment captured in battle. There are clues to their identity in the cast-off turban with egret on the right, between the drum and cannon; also in the three quivers of arrows beside the prisoners. These, with the Venetian style of the frame and the two other turbanned figures seated at the upper corners (one male and one female), indicate that the frame celebrates a Venetian victory in the wars between Venice and the Ottoman empire.

The crest of the frame, with figures of captured Turkish soldiers and military trophy

These wars, due to Venetian success as a trading hub between east and west, its expansion into what is now modern Croatia and Greece, and the corresponding growth and increasing prosperity of the Ottoman empire, caught fire in 1396 with the first in a series of engagements – which were often battles at sea, since both sides were major maritime powers. Over the centuries, parts of mainland Greece, its islands, and Venetian lands on the further side of the Adriatic changed ownership, occasionally to be recaptured by their previous overlords, sometimes remaining in Turkish control as late as the 20^th century. Venice eventually sought allies against the Ottomans, and, with the help of Malta, the Papacy, the Holy Roman Empire and Genoa, in 1571 gained an important victory at the Battle of Lepanto. It was an empty victory, since they were unable to capitalize on their defeat of the Turkish fleet, but it was one which remained an heroic symbol of defiance and endurance, and gave the promise of prevailing ultimately against the foe.

‘The crucial fact is that, for the Venetians, Lepanto was no ordinary victory, but marked a crucial moment in the history of the Republic, equal in its historical significance to the great defeat of Barbarossa’ [1].

Turbanned and shackled soldier, top left corner

Turbanned woman, top right corner

After many further engagements, the seventh Ottoman-Venetian war of 1714-18 brought a final victory for the Ottoman Empire, almost immediately cancelling the result of the previous war at the very end of the 17^th century, which had been won by Venice. It is probable that, from the vantage point of the 18^th century, members of the Venetian families who had taken part in the Battle of Lepanto almost two centuries before might wish to publicize again their ancestors’ achievements, and to highlight their past victory as a corrective to the present Turkish superiority: this may have been the genesis of the trophy frame [2].

Reverse of the trophy frame, showing the characteristic rough finish of antique frames. Photo: Artvisory

Christopher Coles, the main progenitor and co-writer of this article, has noted that, seen from the back, it has a very deep rebate and therefore must have been conceived as a picture frame. Although it currently contains a modern mirrored plate, sharing the fate of so many gloriously carved frames by ending up as a looking-glass, it was almost certainly – by its vertical orientation – designed as a portrait frame. The combination of this evidence and the iconography of the carved figures and trophies must indicate that the original contents would indeed have been a portrait, probably of one of the admirals involved in the battle.

Military trophies at lateral centres of frame

The two central trophies at the sides of the frame seem to represent, separately, the opposing armies. On the left is a quiver of arrows and a shield with a crescent moon (the arrows repeated on the neighbouring panel, inset in the main convex moulding of the frame): bows and arrows were the main weapons on the Turkish side, although they did possess firearms [3]. On the right-hand side is a flanged mace, since, although the Venetians and their allies were mostly equipped with cannon, individual firearms and swords for hand-to-hand fighting, this type of mace was a weapon particularly representative of a knight or cavalry soldier from Lombardy and the Veneto. The piece of armour at the right is also western; the Turks wore gowns and mantles (perhaps with mail shirts beneath), their turbans, and some helmets. The flowers are redolent of Christian symbolism – morning glories for rebirth; the paeony for love of God and resurrection; the sunflower signifying a turning to Christ.

Military trophies at bottom centre of frame

At the bottom of the frame the two sides seem to mingle in a military trophy comprising both allied and Ottoman equipment. Behind the western armoured corselet and Turkish turbanned helmet trimmed with gems and egret is a sheaf of arrows, a north Italian flanged mace, two crescent moon-tipped staves, a standard, and – at the back on the left – the stern of a galley mounted with the head of a bird of prey.

16^th century German school, True likeness of the beheaded Turkish officer Ali Bassa (Pasha), c.1571, woodcut, and detail, V & A

This head indicates an Turkish galley; the woodcut above showing Ali Pasha, Grand Admiral of the Ottoman fleet, with his flagship Sultana where he was defeated by Don John of Austria, boarded and beheaded (detail on the left), has a similar stern on the boat. The front of the galleys on both sides were provided with rams, above and below the water, so that the only place for the equivalent of a figurehead or emblem was at the back.  In this print, the stern of Ali Pasha’s ship is mounted with a dragon’s beaked head, glaring defiantly upwards with its teeth bared; on the frame, the bird’s head droops downwards with its eyes half-closed, as if in defeat.

What the frame might have contained

Dragons at bottom corners of frame

At the two lower corners of the frame, perched in the free-floating foliated scrolls which cling to the back edge of the main structure, and strangely at odds with the rocaille frills beneath their tails, are snarling dragons, gazing upwards at the shackled captives and clasping Turkish battle standards (or perhaps one Turkish and one allied standard) in their paws. They are also shackled, and fastened to the edge of the frame with chains. These are the most ambivalent of the carved figures; are they Ottoman emblems, like the stern ornament of the galley in the woodcut of Ali Pasha? – is one Turkish, and one Venetian? – are they both Venetian, guarding the prisoners, and crushing the enemy banners?

In spring 1571, before the battle, the formation of a Holy League against the Ottoman empire had been celebrated in Venice with processions, a mass, music and feasting; and amongst the masques or tableaux which formed part of the main procession,

‘The first group showed the Great Turk as a ferocious dragon emerging from a cave…’[4]

Cesare Vecellio (attrib.,)  Agostino Barbarigo, c.1571, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. 17-1889

Contemporary illustrations also show the Ottoman empire as a dragon being attacked by the Lion of St Mark (Venice) and the eagle (Holy Roman Empire) [5], whilst a woodcut, above, of Agostino Barbarigo, admiral in command of a third of the fleet at Lepanto, includes a dragon beneath its integral frame and between two Turkish prisoners. The dragon is inscribed on its back,

‘DISPERSIT SUPERBOS’ – ‘he scattered the proud’.

Agostino Barbarigo is one of the natural heroes of Lepanto; under the overall command of Don John of Austria, he led the left-hand wing (55 ships) of the allied fleet to victory, and was hit during the battle by a Turkish arrow in his eye. He continued to fight until unable to carry on, and died two days later [6]. He was depicted exhaustively afterwards, usually (as above) in a pose reminiscent of St Sebastian, holding an arrow pointed towards his eye as though – like the saint – he had suffered martyrdom. And, just as a dragon forms one of the symbols in the ‘frame’ of his printed portrait, so it might have been used in the carved wooden trophies around the giltwood frame, as shorthand for the power of the Ottoman empire which was shackled by Lepanto.

16^th century Venetian School, carved wooden figurehead of a dragon from the galley San Girolamo,  Franciscan Monastery, Hvar, Croatia

There are, however, other possible explanations for the dragons. There is a carved wooden figurehead surviving in the main town of the little island of Hvar, off the coast of what is now Croatia, but which in the 16^th century was still part of the Venetian Empire. It represents a dragon, and decorated the prow of a galley, the San Girolamo[7], which took part in the Battle of Lepanto under the command of Giovanni Balsi or Balzi. This was one of the galleys in the central column of the allied fleet, led by Don John’s flagship the Real, or Royal. Balsi’s crew served with distinction, capturing a Turkish vessel and rowing back to Hvar (then known as Lesina) after the engagement – something which many other crews were unable to do, due to the numbers of their dead or because their galleys were damaged or had been sunk.

Johannes Riestap, Armorial général…, 1884, Gouda, vol. 1, p.107. Internet Archive 

The heraldry expert Angela Howard has kindly and cleverly identified the arms of the Balzi and Balzi-Salvioni families of Vicenza for this essay; the description of the latter, above, is followed by a description of the crest:

‘…un dragon ailé iss. d’arg., cour. d’or, engloutissant un enfant de gu.’, or ‘…a dragon, the top of its wings silver, with a golden crown, engulfing a red child’.

This might, therefore, indicate that the frame was made for 18^th century members of the Balzi-Salvioni family, perhaps to reframe a 16^th century full-length portrait [8] of the Balsi or Balzi who had had such success in the Battle of Lepanto; or to frame a newly-painted image of him, possibly commissioned when the family was ennobled from the gentry to which the Lepanto Balsi belonged. The dragons are in the position usually occupied – on the column plinths at the base of an altarpiece, for instance – by the armorial bearings of the owning or donor family, so they are correctly placed to act as depictions of the crest. They might also have a double meaning: expressing both the terrifying nature of the enemy confronting Venice, and the fiery and courageous qualities of the Venetian commander who captured a Turkish galley.

Unfortunately, the portrait for which the frame was made has long vanished, and – if it were of Balsi, who was neither a doge nor a noble – it has disappeared into that very large population of anonymous canvases which inhabit attics, junk shops, museum stores and cellars, labelled Portrait of a gentleman.

Veronese (1528-88), Agostino Barbarigo, after c.1571,  o/c, 102.2 x 104.2 cm., Cleveland Museum of Art 

It is possible, however, that the frame was not made for Balsi’s descendants, but for those of Agostino Barbarigo. He was the heroic martyr of Lepanto: the man who commanded the Venetian fleet under the capitano generale da Mar, Sebastiano Venier, and who replaced the irascible and undiplomatic Venier at allied councils of war after the latter had hanged three of Don John’s Spanish sailors for rioting [9]. He had been chosen to reorganize the fleet in 1570 because he was

‘…a man of singular prudence and integrity, on whose virtue… it seemed that the Republic could found its hopes’ [10].

He appears to have fulfilled those hopes completely, and his end, like that of an ancient Roman, further heroized him, Marcantonio Colonna writing that by his death,

‘… our Republic of Venice has lost her right arm’ [11].

Tintoretto (circle of; 1519-94), Agostino Barbarigo, o/c, 172.7 x 131.5 cm., Artnet

His posthumous portrait by Veronese (which has been cur down, and was originally slightly longer and wider) produced a large number of copies and adaptations [12], including the almost full-length canvas, above, from the circle around Tintoretto (only around 9 cm. shorter on all four sides than the sight size of the trophy frame)…

Giovanni Battista Fontana (after; 1524-87), Agostino Barbarigo, c,1601, engraving & etching by Dominicus Custos, 42.2 x 28.9 cm., British Museum

…and this print after Fontana, which is also a full-length view, and may have been inspired by a life-size painting.

If the trophy frame were commissioned for a full-length portrait of Agostino Barbarigo – most probably by his descendants, but perhaps as an expression of state pride in past Venetian achievements at a time of decline – then there is no heraldic connection with the dragons at the base of the frame, and they must be symbolic representations of the Ottoman empire, and/or the might of Venice unleashed on its attackers.

The Barbarigo family and the Saracen trophy frames

 The Barbarigo stemma, and its description from Johannes Riestap, op. cit. 

However, there is an historic connection between the sculpted wooden figures of captured Turks on the trophy frame under discussion, and the Barbarigo family. The apocryphal explanation for their name is that an ancestor named Arrigo was doing in the 9^th century pretty much the same as his descendant, Agostino, was doing in the 16^th – fighting the incursion of near eastern enemies at sea. In this case the enemy was Saracen pirates; Arrigo defeated six of them, cut off their beards, and joined the word for beard (‘barba’) to his own name, becoming Barbarigo. The six beards were added to the family escutcheon in two diagonal bands of three, on either side of a central blue band holding three trotting leopards (or lions).

Joseph Nash (1809-78), ‘Titian’s Studio Palazzo Barbarico’ [sic], lithograph after William Lake Price, Interiors and exteriors in Venice, 1843 

More than that, the six Saracens (all of them of course beardless) were immortalized on a set of frames in the Palazzo Barbarigo in Venice, where they punctuated the hang around the room known as ‘Titian’s Studio’ in the palazzo. The paintings in this room were sold en masse in 1581 to Cristoforo Barbarigo (who must have been responsible for the framing) by the artist’s son, Pomponio Vecellio.

Titian (1485/90-d.1576), Venus with a looking-glass, c. 1555, o/c, 124.5 x 105.5 cm., National Gallery of Art, Washington 

In the interior view of the Palazzo Barbarigo published by Nash, two of the set of frames can be seen: on the right, the Venus with a looking-glass, now in a Venetian-style pierced frame in Washington. The painting on the left is at too acute an angle to be identified, although the Saracen frame cannot be mistaken, and its use indicates that the canvas must have been a similar size to the Venus and to the Penitent Magdalene, below.

Eduard Hau (1807-87), Cabinet of Italian schools in the New Hermitage, 1856, watercolour, 29.8 x 28.6 cm., and two details of the Saracen frames shown, State Hermitage Museum. With thanks to Oksana Lysenko 

This Magdalene, in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, still retains the one surviving Saracen frame (there must have been at least four, for symmetry, when in the Palazzo Barbarigo). It was sold with the rest of the Barbarigo ‘studio’ collection to Tsar Nicolai I in 1850 and can be seen in one of Eduard Hau’s watercolours of the New Hermitage, opposite another invisible painting in a Saracen frame (not, this time, the Venus with a looking-glass, now in a rectilinear frame to the right of the doorway).

Titian (1485/90-d.1576), The penitent Magdalene, 1560s, o/c, 119 x 97 cm., State Hermitage Museum . Photo: with thanks to Oksana Lysenko

Although the frame has lost the urns which once surmounted the entablature-like capitals at the upper corners, and some of the ground carving seems a bit clunky, the two main atlantes are beautifully carved and preserved, and the others composed around them in a rhythmic pattern, creating a complete frame out of the Barbarigo legend. All six Saracens are beardless, provided with compensatingly luxuriant RAF-style moustaches, shackled, and also chained to the frame behind them. In the open swan’s neck pediment at the top is a Mannerist cartouche holding a smooth oval shield, which must originally have been painted with the Barbarigo arms – thus completing the beardless Saracens. At the base is a monster’s head; not a lion from the coat of arms, but credibly dragonish in style.

By having these frames carved for some of the Titians he had bought (perhaps those he most valued), Cristoforo Barbarigo was, as it were, setting his seal on his ownership in a very literal sense: displaying them inside the source of the Barbarigo name, like a logo carved around the painting.

18^th century giltwood trophy frame celebrating the 16^th century victory of the Venetian fleets over those of the Ottoman Empire

From this point of view it is possible to imagine that, in the 18^th century, still surrounded by the set of Saracen frames holding their Titians, the contemporary head of the Barbarigo might have commissioned a modern version of the frames – perhaps more than one – to mark a new stage in the family’s history. This was the century when the Ottoman empire reclaimed most of Greece from Venice, and its warlike advance was only halted because it was engaged with the might of the Austrian armies in the north. It signed a peace treaty, but by then Venice had lost much of its wealth and power.

This was also the century when the riches of the arts replaced political influence, and when the patrician at the head of the family during the 1740s – this seems to have been a Pietro Barbarigo; probably the one in the Rococo frame in Ca’ Rezzonico, above – remade the interior of one of the family houses, the 15^th century Palazzo Barbarigo-Minotto, as a Rococo fantasy of paintings and stucchi. He employed, most notably, Carpoforo Mazzetti as a stuccodore and Giambattista Tiepolo as a painter, who, along with other artists, filled the ceilings and overdoors with personifications of the arts and virtues. Given that Pietro (if the same one) commissioned such a vast, sculptural and symbolic frame for his own full-length portrait, it is a logical suggestion that he may have commissioned the Lepanto trophy frame for the Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza, where the Saracen frames hung: perhaps to frame a full-length portrait of his ancestor Agostino Barbarigo, in memory of past glories. Perhaps there was even another, symmetrically-positioned frame, holding a further portrait of himself as the peaceful legatee of the Lepanto victory, or a portrait of Don John of Austria, the overall commander of the allied fleets. This trophy frame, in fact, opens a window onto fascinating historical speculations…

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This article owes its existence and some of the research to Christopher Coles, a provenance researcher with a particular interest in 18^th century English furniture and Chinese export pieces made for the British market. He can be found and contacted through the  BADA website.

Angela Howard, of Heirloom and Howard, provided essential help with the armorial bearings of the Balzi and Balzi-Salvioni families. 

Oksana Lysenko, Russian frame historian and expert, now at the Museum of Fine Arts in Kazan, provided images which opened up the Barbarigo element: the Penitent Magdalene in her Saracen frame and the illustrations by Joseph Nash and Eduard Hau.

With grateful thanks to all of them.

Venetian frame, c.1550-c.74, carved giltwood, 216.5 x 189.2 cm., showing a land battle between Turks and western Europeans, Rijksmuseum 

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[1] Iain Fenlon, ‘Lepanto: the arts of celebration in Renaissance Venice’, Proceedings of the British Academy, LXXIII, 1987, p. 203

[2] The Rijksmuseum possesses a stunning example of a frame commemorating the wars between the Venetian and Ottoman empires (see at end of article). It is more than seven feet tall: a Venetian frame, c.1550-c.74, of carved giltwood, 216.5 x 189.2 cm., showing a land battle between Turks and western Europeans 

[3] William Peak, ‘Muslim equipment at the Battle of Lepanto’

[4] Fenlon, op. cit., p. 205

[5] Ibid., fig. 1, p. 20

[6] Aldo Stella, Dizionario biografico, vol. 6, 1964 

[7] See Marion Podolski, ‘Marking the Battle of Lepanto – the Beast of Sv Jerolim’, Go Hvar, 11 October 2014. This blog is on the revisionist side of those who see 16^th century Venetians from the east coast of the Adriatic as proto-Croatians, and name the participants and their ships in accordance with this: hence the San Girolamo is referred to as the ‘Sv Jerolim’ and the dragon as ‘Zvir’ (the Beast). There is an indignant blog which takes the opposite view, that those living along the eastern Adriatic were Venetians, sprung from families living in Venice, and that the Battle of Lepanto had nothing to do with the modern population which has displaced the earlier inhabitants

[8] The online essay on the copy in the NGA Washington of Veronese’s portrait of Agostino Barbarigo notes that ‘full-length independent portraits of Venetians remained rare throughout the 16^th century’, and a contemporary portrait of Balsi/Balzi – a gentleman rather than a noble – is therefore more likely to have stopped half-way, rather than fitting into the full-length dimensions (190 x 150 cm.) of the trophy frame

[9] Dizionario biografico, op. cit.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Follower of Veronese, poss. 17^th century, NGA Washington; Veronese (attrib.), late 16^th century, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; Domenico Tintoretto (attrib.), Artnet; Veronese (after), Schloss Ambras, Innsbruck