Doge Alvise Mocenigo (1507-1577)

Alvise Mocenigo became doge of Venice in 1570, and his seven years in office brought one blow after another. That same year the Ottomans invaded Cyprus. The naval victory at Lepanto in 1571 did not win the island back, and in 1573 Venice signed a peace that gave it up. Fire damaged the Doge's Palace in 1574, and from 1575 plague spread through the city for two years. None of that reaches the portrait. Mocenigo sits in the set pose of an official doge portrait, a formula going back to Titian, in the ducal cap and gold brocade, his hands on the arms of his chair. The prime version hangs in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, and this Berlin canvas is a replica of it from Tintoretto's workshop. In 1576, with the plague at its worst, the Senate vowed a church to Christ the Redeemer if the city were spared. Mocenigo died in June 1577, about a month after its first stone was laid.