Michieli family coat of arms in stone

Description

A stone slab bearing a relief coat of arms. The shield is divided by horizontal bars, and between them sit fifteen roundels arranged 1 – 4 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1. The right half of the slab is broken away.

Established: the arms are those of the Michieli, a Venetian patrician house. The blazon reads "fasciato d'azzurro e d'argento, caricato da quindici bisanti d'oro, posti 1, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1" — barry azure and argent, charged with fifteen gold bezants (Stemmi delle famiglie patrizie di Venezia, no. 458). The arrangement of the roundels was not estimated from a photograph but measured on the 3D scan: five rows lie within the field of the shield, and the fifteenth roundel sits in the capital above it.

To the left of the shield the letter A is measured and legible. The mark on the right is a weathered zone and cannot be read.

Assumption: the slab is probably connected to Andrea Michiel, Count and Captain of Ulcinj 1479–1481, as recorded in the Venetian Segretario alle Voci registers. Restoring the right-hand mark as an M rests on the museum's own label for the object and on those initials — a reasoned assumption, not a measurement.