Temperance
by ASPETTI, Tiziano, Bronze, over life-size
Through family connections, in 1577 in Venice Aspetti entered the service of Giovanni Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia. Grimani was a distinguished patron of contemporary art, and his palazzo housed the finest and most extensive collection of antiquities outside Rome. Aspetti worked for the Patriarch for 16 years and hence, unlike any other Venetian artist of his day, began his career as a kind of court artist serving one particular patron.
The over life-size figures of Justice and Temperance in the Grimani Chapel in San Francesco della Vigna - Aspetti’s first attempts in bronze - were begun before 28 November 1592, when, in a codicil to his will, Patriarch Grimani ordered that Aspetti finish them. The statues are in niches beside the altar.