Attributed to Alessandro Merli (Venice, active 1590-1606)

This and the following lot were probably executed as frontispieces for promissioni, elaborate documents produced to celebrate new appointments to official positions in the Venetian State bureaucracy (despite the past tense used in the Latin motto). Here the unidentified governor receives his baton of command from the Lion of Saint Mark and the sword of justice from Saint Michael. Jupiter, mounted on his eagle above, gestures towards the island of Crete, where Venetian galleys lie in an inlet and the dove of Peace represents what was expected as the outcome of the new governor's rule. Beside the armoured official stands an enigmatic figure with a coiled serpent. She must be a personification of Crete itself: her attribute of the serpent suggests that the artist may have been inspired by accounts of the ancient Minoan cult of the Snake Goddess at Knossos, although the classicised figure here bears little direct resemblance to surviving ancient representations of the goddess.