The House of Vendramin (, ) was a rich merchant family of Venice, Italy, who were among the case nuove or "new houses" who joined the patrician class when the Libro d'Oro was opened after the battle of Chioggia (June 1380). Andrea Vendramin served as the sole Vendramin Doge from 1476–78, at the height of Venetian power, though in 1477 an Antonio Feleto was imprisoned, then banished, for remarking in public that the Council of the Forty-One must have been hard-pressed to elect a cheesemonger Doge. In his youth, Andrea and his brother Luca, in joint ventures, used to ship from Alexandria enough goods to fill a galley or a galley and a half, Malipiero recorded in retrospect: even his factors grew rich managing his affairs. At this period, mentions of Vendramins in various fields of business occur; Luca Vendramin (d.1527) founded a successful bank on the still-wooden Rialto Bridge with three Capelli brothers in 1507, but in his will of 1524 forbade his sons from continuing in banking. An early text on accounting mentions that the Vendramins' soap is so reliably good that you can buy it without inspecting it. Later they owned an important theatre.
In the early seventeenth century the Vendramin also provided the Republic of Venice with an ambassador and Patriarch of Venice, in Francesco Vendramin (1555-October 7, 1619), elected Patriarch in 1605, despite being a layman, and made a Cardinal in 1615. He introduced a requirement that priests hearing confessions had to be over 35 years old, and take an examination in canon law, despite having himself evaded a Papal examination on the same subject for candidates to the Patriarchy. He bequeathed 600 ducats a year to the Jesuits, then banned from Venice, partly inspiring a law banning legacies to them.
Two main branches of the family descended from Doge Andrea, ancestor of the Patriarch, and his brother Luca, grandfather of the two brothers in the Titian Portrait of the Vendramin Family in the National Gallery, London. The Vendramin became extinct in the main male line when Niccolò Vendramin died in 1840. Today they are remembered almost entirely for their impressive artistic legacy.
Miracle of the True Cross
The reliquary of the True Cross shown on the altar in the National Gallery Titian, which still exists, was connected with a miracle in 1370-82 depicted by Vittorio Carpaccio, Gentile Bellini and other artists. When accidentally dropped into a canal during a congested procession it did not sink but hovered over the water, evading others trying to help, until an earlier Andrea Vendramin (grandfather of the Doge) dived in and retrieved it. This Andrea had been presented with the relic in 1369, in his capacity as head of the confraternity Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista of San Giovanni Evangelista; the scuola still own it. Both the large Bellini painting, The Miracle of the True Cross near San Lorenzo Bridge, of 1496–1500,, and the Carpaccio of 1494, are now in the Accademia museum.
Monuments
Doge Andrea has what is generally agreed to be "the most lavish funerary monument of Renaissance Venice", in the basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the usual burial-place of Doges, by Tullio Lombardo. However the portrait in the Frick Collection by Gentile Bellini, inscribed with his name, is now considered to be of his successor, Doge Giovanni Mocenigo.
The Cardinal-Patriarch is commemorated in the Vendramin chapel of San Pietro di Castello, designed by Baldassare Longhena, with two marble high reliefs by Michele Ongharo, of Vendramin's consecration as cardinal by Pope Paul V and an allegory of Death.
Collectors
In the first half of the sixteenth century Gabriele Vendramin was a notable patron of artists and the owner of one of the most significant collections in Venice. Sebastiano Serlio saluted him in print as an authority on ancient Roman buildings and the work of Vitruvius.