Sagredo Family project

Sagredo Family project collects profiles of all descendants of the Venetian Sagredo family, and people with the surname Sagredo. Also profiles of close friends and supporters, and people closely related to Sagredos, are welcome. (This project was started Jan 27th 2019)

There are large Sagredo families also in Spain, South-America and elsewhere. They are possibly branches of the Venetians. A Spanish-South-American branch descends from Leonor de Sagredo, whose son is born in Spain and grandson Cristóbal Sagredo de Molina Santiesteban in 1582 already in Chile.

The Sagredos

The Sagredos were a Venetian patrician family, counted among the so-called New Houses. In the second half of the seventeenth century they gave the Republic a doge, Nicolò Sagredo (1606 - 1676).

History

According to the legend, the Sagredos were originally from ancient Rome and later passed to Dalmatia where they were involved in the local administration. The surname derives from 'secretum', from the secrets that they shared with the emperors about the government of the region. In 840 they would have left Sibenik to reach Venice, being aggregated to the Maggior Consiglio in 1110. According to the family tradition San Gerardo Sagredo di Csanád (c. 980 - 1046), the evangelizing bishop of Hungary, and later a saint, belonged to this family, but this cannot be verified.


San Gerardo Sagredo di Csanád (c. 980 - 1046)

Legends aside, the first attestations of the family appear in public records around the year one thousand and in private deeds in 1012, under the name of Secreti and Segredi.

They were among the most influential, wealthy and powerful aristocratic families of Venice for almost the entire duration of the Serenissima Republic, reaching the height of their power during the seventeenth century. The family gave birth not only to the above mentioned doge but also to military commanders, politicians and ecclesiastics, among them Alvise, the Patriarch of Venice.


Giovanni Francesco Sagredo (1571-1620), a philosopher and mathematician, and close friend of Galileo



Nicolò Sagredo (1606 - 1676) Doge of Venice and his brother Alvise Sagredo (1617 - 1688) Patriarch of Venice


After the fall of the Serenissima, the imperial government of Vienna confirmed the nobility of the various branches of this family with the Sovereign Resolutions dated 1817, 1819 and 1820. Giovanni Gerardo (1740 - 1822), of Francesco Sagredo, obtained for himself and for his descendants the title of count of the Austrian Empire.

The Sagredo family is devided into two main branches, Santa Ternita and Santa Sofia.

Sagredo di Santa Ternita

This branch descends from Pietro Sagredo, who probably died before 1600.

In the mid- seventeenth century King Louis XIV granted the family to affix on the coat of arms the three lilies of France, for the merits of Giovanni di Agostino (1616 - 1682), ambassador in the Alps.

Sagredo di Santa Sofia

It is the line that descends from Bernardo di Giovan Francesco, even if the first to move to the palace of Santa Sofia was Nicolò di Zaccaria - the only doge given by the house. Previously they lived in Palazzo Trevisan Cappello, a place where Galileo Galilei set the Dialogue above the two greatest systems of the world, placing Gianfrancesco Sagredo di Stefano among the interlocutors.

The Sagredo of Santa Sofia became extinct in 1738, with the death without male heirs of Gerardo Sagredo.

At the time, the family assets were organized into two fidecommessi. The first, established by the patriarch Alvise di Zaccaria, was sold to the Senate with an agreement signed by the widow Cecilia Grimani Calergi and her daughters Caterina and Marina. The other, established by Gerardo himself, was intended for male nephews only, but all died prematurely; he was then inherited by a distant relative, Francesco Sagredo of the "Santa Ternita" branch.


La famiglia Sagredo, by Pietro Longhi (c. 1752). (Left to right: Cecilia Grimani Calergi, her daughter Marina with a grandson Almoro II Pisani, and her daughter Caterina with granddaughters Cecilia and Contarina, and a servant)

Lezione di geografia, by Pietro Longhi. (Left to right: Cecilia and Contarina Barbarigo, their tutor, and their mother Caterina Sagredo. San Gregorio Barbarigo, the Cardinal-Bishop, in frames on the wall.)

Notable family members

• According to a tradition, that today is considered uncertain, San Gerardo Sagredo di Csanád (died in 1046), the evangelizing bishop of Hungary, would have belonged to this family.
• Gianfrancesco Sagredo (1571 - 1620) philosopher with whom Galileo Galilei entertained a rich correspondence between 1599 and 1619. Gianfrancesco Sagredo was also one of the three protagonists of the Dialogue above the two greatest systems of the world.
• Nicolò Sagredo (1606 - 1676), Venetian doge, son of Zaccaria and Paola Foscari.
• Giovanni Sagredo (1616 - 1682), Venetian ambassador.
• Alvise Sagredo (1617 - 1688) was the patriarch of Venice from 1678 to his death.
• Zaccaria Sagredo (Venice, 1653 - 1729), son of Stefano and Vienna Foscarini, one of the most important Venetian art collectors of the eighteenth century.
• Gerardo Sagredo (died 1738 ) husband Cecilia Grimani and father of: Caterina wife of Gregorio Barbarigo (1709-1766) and of Marina who married Andrea Pisani in 1741 . The famous work by Pietro Longhi "La Sagredo family" is dedicated to these characters . Marina Sagredo was a woman famous for the freedom and independence of attitudes. To her Carlo Goldoni in 1700's dedicated the comedy "La Sposa Virtuosa" and for her Pietro Longhi in 1774 painted L'elefante, recording the exhibition of the exotic pachyderm during the carnival, according to the documentary praxis inaugurated twenty years earlier with images of Rhinoceros. Pietro Longhi portrayed in the "Lesson of geography", painting of the Civic Museums of Padua, also the daughters of Caterina Sagredo and Gregorio Barbarigo (1709-1766) Cecilia and Contarina Barbarigo, the fiery lover of Andrea Memmo .
• Francesco Sagredo (1705 - 1782); husband of Camilla Bembo was father of: Giovanni Gerardo Sagredo (1740-1822), Elena wife of Pattaro Buzzacarini, Chiara wife of Lodovico Malaguzzi Valeri descendant of Ludovico Ariosto, Agostino, Gerardo and Pietro. Among the direct descendants of Elena Sagredo we remember Novello Papafava, Enoch Peserico, Margherita Peserico, wife of Angelo Granetto, Barbara Jacopetti wife of Niccolò Valmarana, son of Ludovico, owner of Villa Almerico Capra called la Rotonda.
• Cecilia Sagredo, harpsichordist, born March 28, 1711 wife in 1727 of Giorgio Baffo son of Andrea Baffo and Chiara Querini . Cecilia Sagredo in 1771 met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as evidenced by the letter in which Mozart talks about her to his father Leopold.
• Nicolò Angelo Sagredo (1728 - 1804) was the archbishop of Udine from 1788 to 1792, and bishop of Torcello with personal title of archbishop, from 1792 to his death.
• Giovanni Gerardo Sagredo (1740 - 1822) son of Francesco, Senator and Inquisitor of State, married Eleonora Elisabetta Renier, daughter of Alvise, and Caterina Berlendis, protector of Antonio Canova. Alvise Renier was brother of Federico Renier who married in 1627 Elena Mocenigo daughter of Alvise Mocenigo . Giovanni Gerardo was the father of Agostino Sagredo and Caterina, wife of Count Ippolito Malaguzzi Valeri of Reggio Emilia and mother of Eleonora, who married Giuseppe Manodori, patrician of Reggio. From this branch descends Alberto Manodori, professor of history of photography at the University of Rome Tor Vergata.
• Agostino Sagredo (1798 - 1871), Italian politician.
  
  

Sagredo palaces

• Ca' Sagredo, a Cannaregio;
• Cappella Sagredo, nella chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna, a Castello;
• Palazzo Sagredo, a Castello;
• Palazzo Sagredo, a Santa Croce;
• Villa Sagredo Balzan Toderini degli Gagliardins, a Conselve;
• Villa Sagredo, a Vigonovo;
• Villa Sagredo, alla Favorita.
  
  
  

Villa Sagredo, Vigonovo, Venice, built in the1500's

The farm of Villa Sagredo, Vigonovo, Venice