The Palazzo Labia’s longest deception overlooks the Canale di Cannaregio , the main entrance to Venice before the rail and road links were constructed; if you turn left along its fondamenta rather than going with the flow over the Ponte delle Guglie, you’ll be virtually alone by the time you’re past the late seventeenth-century Palazzo Savorgnan . This was the home of one of Venice’s richest families - indeed, so great was the Savorgnans’ social clout that the Rezzonico family marked their intermarriage by getting Tiepolo to paint a fresco celebrating the event in the Ca’ Rezzonico. Beyond the palazzo, swing left at the Ponte dei Tre Archi (Venice’s only multiple-span bridge) and you’re at the church of San Giobbe , like San Moisè an example of Venice’s usage of canonizing Old Testament figures.

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San Giobbe is open Mon-Sat 10am-noon & 4-6pm.

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“So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown,” records the Bible. Job’s physical sufferings - sanctioned by the Almighty in order to test his establishment - greatly endeared him to the Venetians, who were regularly afflicted with malaria, plague and a plethora of water-related diseases, and in the fourteenth century an oratory and hospice dedicated to him was founded here. In 1428 the complex was taken over by the Observant Franciscans, and in 1443 the order’s greatest preacher, Bernardine of Siena, was a guest here, in what turned out to be the last year of his life. Bernardine’s canonization followed in 1450, an event commemorated here by the construction of a new church, a Gothic structure commenced by Antonio Gambello soon after the canonization. However, the specially interesting parts of the building are its exquisitely carved primeval Renaissance doorway and chancel - begun in 1471, they were the first Venetian projects of Pietro Lombardo .

After the Lombardo carvings, the most appealing elements of the interior are the roundels and tiles from the Florentine della Robbia workshop, in the Cappella Martini (second chapel on left); the presence of these Tuscan features is explained by the fact that the chapel was funded by a family of Lucca-born silk weavers. The tomb slab in the centre of the chancel floor is that of Doge Cristoforo Moro , the donor of the new building; a satirical leaflet about Moro may have been a source for Shakespeare’s Othello , even though - as the portrait in the room shows - Moro bore no interracial similarity to the Moor of Venice. San Giobbe’s great altarpieces by composer and Carpaccio have been removed to the damp-free environment of the Accademia (the original marble frame for the composer now encloses a dull Vision of Job ); the parishioners might not weep if someone removed the ludicrous lions on the tomb of the magnificently titled Renato de Voyer de Palmy Signore d’Argeson , who served as the French ambassador to Venice and died here in 1651. At the end of the nave, a doorway leads into a room that was once part of the original oratory, which in turn connects with the sacristy , where there’s a fine triptych by Antonio Vivarini, a fifteenth-century terracotta bust of Saint Bernardine and a Marriage of St. Catherine attributed to Andrea Previtali.