“In the monastery the refettorio and the two cloisters surrounded by columns stand out for their wealth of architecture and decoration”. These are the words used by Francesco Sansovino to describe the San Salvador Convent in his book “Venetia città mobilissima et singolare” (Venice, a one of a kind dynamical township) published in 1581. The prise cast by this learned Venetian, although generic in a certain way, represents the ancient testimony on this artistic masterpiece that has come to us. There is also a little mistery about the frescos adorning the ceiling of the Refettorio.

The ceiling, in fact, is richly decorated by a melange of stuccos and frescos: in addition to the five octagonal area of large size placed along the central axe, the sixteen ovals placed around the five circles and the two larger ovals on the short sides, the ceiling is alive with symbolic, sometimes grotesque figures. The interpretation of the frescos is sometimes impeded by the fading away brought by the time. The conservation project launched in the 80ies stopped the degradation but did not restored those part where the plaster fell long time ago. Reports from the XVII centuries indicate Polidoro da Lanciano as the painter of the frescos. He worked in Venice between 1530 and 1565, when he died, is nowadays believed untrue by many researchers that indicate the author in Fermo Ghisoni.

Ghisoni, born in the village of Caravaggio in 1505, was one of the most appreciated students of Giulio Romano, whom he assisted in the painting of the fresco of the Palazzo Te in Mantua, and later in the decoration of the Palazzo Ducale, still in Mantua in 1538. At that time he terminated his collaboration with Giulio Romano. We know that from the summer of 1545 Fermo Ghisoni was in Venice and that right at that time the monks in San Salvador after furnishing the Refettorio with the benches and other wooden decoration decided to paint the ceiling.

Besides this chronological assonance, the comparison between the frescos of the Refettorio of San Salvador and those of the Mantua “palazzi” where Ghioni painted under the supervision of Romano shows several similarities in their make-believe illusions, lateral perspectives and artificial manipulation of shapes.