A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

1102. THE CHEVALIER ANDREA TRON.

Pietro Longhi (Venetian: 1702-1762). See 1100.

The portrait of "a procurator of St. Mark's," a dignity in the Venetian State second only to that of Doge. The procurators were charged with the legal administration of all the affairs of St. Mark's, and their official palaces (the Procuratie) adjoined the church. They were further charged with the care of orphans, and with the administration of others who cared to put themselves "in chancery." The office was thus not unlike that of an English Lord Chancellor, and there is a "grandmotherliness" about this procurator that makes one think he must have discharged some of his duties well. The broad golden stole over his shoulder shows him to have been also a knight of the order of the Stola d'Oro, as the Procurator's stole was of crimson velvet. The picture is in its original frame, surmounted by the armorial bearings of the Tron family.