The Dream of Jacob

The painting The Dream of Jacob returns to the Longhena Monumental Staircase after careful restoration work, which began in November 2024 and was carried out by Seres s.r.l. with the contribution of the San Marco Group.

HISTORY

The canvas is the only Venetian painting by Flemish artist Valentin Lefèvre and dates back to around 1671. It depicts Jacob’s dream at Bethel, a prophecy of the chosen lineage, visualised by a staircase populated by angels. The painting is located eleven metres above the ground in the vault of the staircase designed by Baldassarre Longhena, which once gave access to the Abbot’s apartments.

Archival documentation and historical information on the work are scarce. Pietro Edwards, in a report from 1806, while emphasising the fine workmanship, lamented its worrying state of conservation. Photographic documentation preserved in the IUAV project archive (Fossati Collection) shows that in the early 1950s, during the restoration of the island, the canvas was lowered with ropes onto a work surface and, after a few days, returned to its original location. The recently completed restoration involved work on a previous intervention, for which no description has been found, which may have taken place before the 1950s.

THE RESTORATION

The restoration can be considered the first thorough conservation work since the painting was created. The analysis phase made use of an experimental and innovative remote spectroscopy technique developed by Mauro Missori, a physicist at the CNR, whose scientific results were published in Archeologia e Calcolatori. The canvas was rolled up and taken to a room in the Napoleonic Wing, where the restoration laboratory was set up. The old lining was removed to flatten the canvas, which was reinforced with a new synthetic auxiliary support. The painting surface was then cleaned, filled, treated for gaps and varnished. Mounting it on a new frame will allow it to be relocated in the vault, which has been structurally consolidated. The restoration work has revealed the rich colours and figurative and iconographic complexity of the painting, which had been almost invisible under a layer of dirt and materials altered by time.