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By
courtesy of the present owner of the house,
the Committee of Venice in Peril has had
this delightful oddity conserved in honour
of Sir Ashley Clarke -one of its founders
and a Freeman of Venice- who died in January
1994. There are three such figures of Arabs
on the Campo dei Mori, said to represent
the Mastelli brothers from the Morea (better
known as the Peloponnese) who came to Venice
as merchants in the 13th century. Round
the corner on the Fondamenta dei Mori is
a fourth, of a Levantine merchant named
Alfani; this is set into the façade
of a 15th-century house, no.3399, in which
Tintoretto later lived. The pedestal of
the statue proved to be a local 15th-century
version of a Roman altar; his turban is
a column capital, reused. No attempt was
made to straighten the crooked sides of
his niche, nor to remove completely the
remains of pigment applied by past generations
of his neighbours.
DIRECTION OF WORKS: Superintendency for
the Environmental and Architectural Heritage
CONSERVATOR: Anna Keller |
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