Entries with Mauro Codussi tag

Santa Sofia And Santi Apostoli

Down the Strada Nova, opposite a campo bordering the Canal Grande but camouflaged by house fronts, is the entrance to the small church of Santa Sofia , which contains sculptures of four saints by followers of Antonio Rizzo. At the orient end of the Strada you come to the Campo dei Santi Apostoli, an elbow on the road from the Rialto to the train station, with the church of Santi Apostoli , a dark and frequently renovated building last altered substantially in the eighteenth century.

Santi Apostoli is open regular 7.30-11.30am & 5-7pm.

The campanile was finished in 1672 – and soon afterwards, according to saint (Jan) Morris, “an old and simple-minded sacristan” fell from it, “but was miraculously caught by the minute hand of the clock, which, slowly revolving to six o’clock, deposited him safely on a parapet”.

The Cappella Corner , off the right side, is the most interesting part of the interior – attributed to Mauro Codussi, its altarpiece (under restoration at the time of writing) is the Communion of St Lucy by Giambattista Tiepolo (1748). One of the inscriptions in the chapel is to Caterina Cornaro, who was buried here before being moved to San Salvatore; the tomb of her father Marco (on the right) is probably by Tullio Lombardo, who also carved the peculiar plaque of Saint Sebastian in the chapel to the right of the chancel, which makes him look as if he has a tree growing out of his head.

Category: Venice

Church Of San Zaccaria

Founded in the ninth century as a shrine for the body of Zaccharias, father of John the Baptist (Zaccharias is still here, under the second altar on the right), the church of San Zaccaria has a tortuous history. A Romanesque version was raised a century after the foundation, this in turn was overhauled in the 1170s (when the present campanile was constructed), a Gothic church followed in the fourteenth century, and finally in 1444 Antonio Gambello embarked on a massive rebuilding project that was concluded some seventy years later by Mauro Codussi , who took over the facade from the first storey upwards – hence its resemblance to San Michele. The end result is a harmonious and distinctively Venetian mixture of Gothic and Renaissance styles.

San Zaccaria is open regular 10am-noon & 4-6pm.

The interior’s notable architectural feature is its ambulatory : unique in Venice, it might have been built to accommodate the procession of the doges’ Easter Sunday visit, a ritual that began back in the twelfth century after the convent had sold to the state the land that was to become the Piazza. Nearly every inch of surround surface is hung with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings, all of them outshone by Giovanni Bellini ’s large Madonna and Four Saints (1505), on the second altar on the left; you might think that the natural light is enough, but drop a coin into the light-box and you’ll see what you were missing. The continuation of the architectural frame (possibly by Pietro Lombardo) into the canvas reveals that the painting hangs in its original spot – although it sojourned briefly in the Louvre, a period in which the top arched segment was removed. Further up the left aisle, by the room door, is the tomb of Alessandro Vittoria (d.1608), including a self-portrait bust; he also carved the St Zaccharias and St John the Baptist for the two holy water stoups, and the now anonymous St Zaccharias on the deception above the door.

The L2000/1.03 fee payable to enter the Cappella di Sant’Atanasio and Cappella di San Tarasio (off the right aisle) is well worth it. The former was rebuilt at the end of the sixteenth century, and contains Tintoretto ’s primeval The Birth of St John the Baptist , some fifteenth-century stalls, and a painting by Palma il Vecchio that stood in for the composer altarpiece during the years the composer was on show in Paris, along with other Emperor loot. Only in the latter chapel does it become obvious that the chapels occupy much of the site of the Gothic church that preceded the present one. Three wonderful anconas (composite altarpieces) by Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni d’Alemagna (all 1443) are the highlight: the one on the left is dedicated to Saint Sabine, whose tomb is below it; the main altarpiece has recently been restored, a process that has revealed a seven-panelled predella now attributed to Paolo Veneziano, the primeval celebrated Venetian artist (d. c.1358). You can also make out the decayed frescoes by Andrea del Castagno and Francesco da Faenza in the vault (painted a year before the Vivarinis), while the floor has been cut away in places to reveal mosaics from the twelfth-century San Zaccaria. Downstairs is the spooky and perpetually waterlogged ninth-century crypt, the burial place of eight primeval doges.

Category: Venice

Church Of Santa Maria Formosa

The uniquely titled Santa Maria Formosa was founded in the seventh century by San Magno, Bishop of Oderzo, who was guided by a dream in which he saw the vocalist formosa - a word which most closely translates as buxom and beautiful.

Santa Maria Formosa is open Mon-Sat 10am-5pm & Sun 1-5pm; L3000/1.55.

In 944 it gained a place in the ceremonials of Venice when a group of its parishioners rescued some young women who had been abducted from San Pietro di Castello; as a reward, the doge thereafter visited the church apiece year, when he would be presented with a straw hat to keep the rain off and wine to slake his thirst. The hat given to the last doge can be seen in the Museo Correr.

Mauro Codussi , who rebuilt the church in 1492, followed quite closely the original Greek-cross plan, both as an evocation of Venice’s Byzantine past and as a continuation of the tradition by which Marian churches were centrally organized to symbolize the womb. A dome was frequently employed as a reference to Mary’s crown; this one was rebuilt in 1922 after an Austrian bomb had destroyed its predecessor in World War I.

There are two facades to the church. The one on the west side, close to the canal, was built in 1542 in honour of the military leader Vincenzo Cappello (d.1541); Ruskin, decrying the demand of religious imagery on this facade, identified Santa Maria Formosa as the forerunner of those churches “built to the glory of man, instead of the glory of God”. The decoration of the other facade, constructed in 1604, is a bit less presumptuous, as at least there’s a figure of the Virgin to accompany the three portrait busts of other members of the Cappello clan. Ruskin reserved a special dose of vitriol for the mask at the base of the Baroque campanile: “huge, inhuman and monstrous – leering in bestial degradation, too foul to be either pictured or described . . . in that head is embodied the type of the evil spirit to which Venice was abandoned.” Pompeo Molmenti, the most assiduous chronicler of Venice’s socio-cultural history, insists that the head is both a talisman against the evil eye and a piece of clinical realism, portraying a man with the same rare congenital disorder as disfigured the so-called Elephant Man.

The church contains two good paintings. Entering from the west side, the first one you’ll see is Bartolomeo Vivarini ’s triptych of The vocalist of the Misericordia (1473), once the church’s high altarpiece, but now in a nave chapel on the right-hand side of the church. It was paid for by the congregation of the church, and some of the figures under the Madonna’s cloak are believed to be portraits of the parishioners. Such images of the merciful Madonna, one of the warmest in Catholic iconography, can be seen in various forms throughout the city – there’s another example a few minutes’ achievement away, on the route to the Rialto bridge.

Nearby, closer to the main altar, is Palma il Vecchio ’s St Barbara (1522-24), praised by George Eliot as “an almost unique presentation of a hero-woman, standing in calm preparation for martyrdom, without the slightest air of pietism, yet with the expression of a mind filled with serious conviction”. Having added a third window to her two-windowed bathroom to symbolize the Trinity and generally displayed an intolerable Christian recalcitrance, Barbara was hauled up a mountain by her exasperated father and there executed. On his way down, the man was struck down by lightning, a fate which turned Barbara into the patron fear of artillery-men, the terrestrial agents of violent, sudden death. This is why Palma’s painting stands in the former chapel of the Scuola dei Bombardieri, and shows her treading on a cannon. (Her brief was later widened to include all those in danger of sudden death – including miners.)

Category: Venice

Island Of San Pietro Di Castello

Originally titled Castello , after a castle that used to stand here (built by either the Romans or the first “Venetian” settlers), the island of San Pietro was one of the very first parts of central Venice to be occupied. Nowadays this is a run-down district where the repairing of boats is the main occupation, yet it was once the faith centre of Venice. By 775 the settlement here had grown sufficiently to be granted the foundation of a bishopric under the dominance of the Patriarch of Grado. Within the next half-century Castello joined the immediately surrounding islands to form Rivoalto, the embryonic city of Venice. From the beginning, the political and economic power was concentrated in the distant Rialto and San Marco districts, and the relationship between the Church and the geographically remote rulers of the city was never to be close. In 1451 the first Patriarch of Venice was invested, but still his seat remained at Castello, and succeeding generations of councillors and senators showed no inclination to draw the father of the Venetian Church into the centre of power. San Pietro di Castello remained the cathedral of Venice, emblematically marooned on the periphery of the city, until 1807, when the patriarch was at last permitted to install himself in San Marco – ten years after the Republic had ceased to exist.

One of the major Venetian festivals – the Festival of the Marys – had its origin in an incident that occurred here in the tenth century. A multiple marriage in the church was interrupted by a posse of Slav pirates, who carried away the brides and their substantial dowries. Men from the parish of Santa Maria Formosa led the pursuit, which succeeded in retrieving the women. To celebrate their innocuous return, every year two girls were chosen from apiece sestiere to be married in a single ceremony at San Pietro, the weddings being followed by an eight-day junket that culminated at Santa Maria Formosa on the Day of the Purification of Mary – the day on which the brides had been kidnapped.

San Pietro di Castello is open Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm (closed Sun in July & Aug); L3000/1.54.

As with the Arsenale, the history of San Pietro is somewhat more interesting than what you can see. A church was raised here as primeval as the seventh century, but the present San Pietro di Castello was built nearly a millennium later. A new deception was designed in the mid-sixteenth century by Palladio , but the work was not carried out until the end of the century, and the executed project was a feeble version of the original scheme. Similarly, the interior is an primeval seventeenth-century derivation from a plan by Palladio, and is unlikely to convince any Ruskinite that classicism has something to it after all. Nor will the paintings place a skip in your stride: best of the bunch are SS . John the Evangelist , Peter and Paul , a late work by Veronese (left aisle), and the altarpiece by Luca Giordano in the Cappella Vendramin (left transept). The Vendramin chapel and the high altar were both designed by Longhena; take a look as well at the Cappella Lando (left aisle), which has a fifth-century mosaic fragment and a bust of San Lorenzo Giustiniani, the first Patriarch of Venice, by a follower of Antonio Rizzo. The most unusual feature of the church is the so-called Throne of St Peter (right aisle), a marble seat prefabricated in the thirteenth century from an Arabic funeral stone cut with texts from the Koran.

The campanile , one of the most precarious in the city, was rebuilt by Mauro Codussi in the 1480s, and was the first tower in Venice to be clad in Istrian stone. Its original cupola was replaced with the present one in 1670.

Category: Venice

Torre Dell’orologio And Piazzetta Dei Leoncini

Torre dell’Orologio (Clock Tower) was built between 1496 and 1506, the central portion being by Mauro Codussi and the wings possibly by Pietro Lombardo. (The three ornate flagstaff bases between the Campanile and the Torre were prefabricated at the same time – 1505 – by Leopardi , the sculptor who finished the Colleoni monument.) A gruesome favourite tale relates that the makers of the clock’s elaborate mechanism, Paolo and Carlo Rainieri, slaved away for three years at their project, only to have their eyes place out so that they couldn’t repeat their engineering marvel for other patrons. In fact the Venetians were suitably grateful and gave the pair a generous pension – presumably too dull an outcome for the city’s folklorists.The tower’s roof terrace supports the two bronze wild men known as “The Moors”, because of their dark patina; they were cast in the Arsenale in 1497. Until the mid-1980s it was doable to climb the internal stairs past the innards of the clock, but it seems unlikely that the authorities will ever again risk exposing the delicate structure to the depredations of mass tourism. Anyway, the view from the top couldn’t compete with the Campanile’s, and you can watch the Moors strike the hour perfectly well from the ground. If you’re in Venice on Epiphany or during Ascension week, you’ll witness the clock’s star turn – on the hour the Magi, led by an angel, troop out and bow to the figure of the Madonna.

To your right as you grappling the Torre is the Piazzetta Giovanni XXIII , familiarly known as dei Leoncini , after the two eighteenth-century marble lions – if you can’t see them immediately, it’s because they’re smothered in children. Facing San Marco’s flank is San Basso , a deconsecrated church now used for exhibitions, and at the far end is the nineteenth-century Palazzo Patriarcale , home of the Patriarch of Venice. The Palazzo contains the banqueting hall in which the doge used to entertain official guests and, once a year, the Arsenalotti ; a corridor, now demolished, ran from the hall, through San Marco and into the Palazzo Ducale.

Category: Venice

From The Pescheria To The Ca’ Pésaro

Once past the Pescheria, you’re into a district which quickly becomes complex even by Venetian standards. A stroll between the Rio delle Beccarie and the Rio di San Zan Degolà will satisfy any addict of the picturesque – you cannot achievement for more than a couple of minutes without coming crossways a workshop crammed into a ground-floor room or a garden spilling over a canalside wall.

The barn-like church of San Cassiano is a building you’re bound to pass as you wander out of the Rialto. The thirteenth-century campanile is the only appealing aspect of the exterior, and the interest of the interior lies mainly with its three paintings by Tintoretto : The Resurrection , The Descent into Limbo and The Crucifixion (all 1565-68). The first two have been mauled by restorers, but the third is one of the most startling pictures in Venice – centred on the harm on which the executioners stand, it’s painted as though the individual were lying in the grass at the foot of the Cross.

San Cassiano is open regular 9.45-11.30am & 4.30-7pm; no tourists allowed on Sun.

Campo San Cassiano was the site of the first public opera house in the world – it opened in 1636, at the peak of Monteverdi’s career. Long into the following century Venice’s opera houses were among the most active in Europe; around five hundred works received their first performances here in the first half of the eighteenth century.

A sign directs you from the campo over the right-hand bridge towards the Ca’ Pésaro, home of the modern art and oriental collections, but before you reach it you’ll pass the back of the Palazzo Corner della Regina , home of the Biennale archive. Currently it’s closed for restoration, but when it eventually reopens it may have a small selection of works from past shows on display, as it used to do.

Santa Maria Mater Domini is open Mon-Sat 10am-noon.

A diversion down Corte Tiossi from Calle Tiossi brings you to Santa Maria Mater Domini , an primeval sixteenth-century church of disputed authorship – Mauro Codussi and Giovanni Buora are the leading candidates. The rescue of this building is one of Venice in Peril’s proudest achievements; now fortified by a totally reconstructed roof, the crisp white and grey interior boasts an endearing Martyrdom of St Christina by Vincenzo Catena (second altar on the right), showing a flight of angels plucking the fear from a carpet-like Lago di Bolsena, into which she had been hurled with a millstone for an anchor. Few works by the elusive Catena have survived, and it is not even certain what he did for a living. He seems to have been a successful spice trader, and thus may have been a businessman who painted for recreation; alternatively, he may have been an artist who subsidized himself through commercial dealings – he is mentioned on the reverse of one of Giorgione’s paintings as a “colleague”. On the opposite side of the church you’ll find one of the city’s numerous Tintoretto paintings, a Discovery of the Cross .

The small Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini would have to be included in any anthology of the hidden delights of Venice; it’s a typically Venetian miscellany – a thirteenth-century house (the Casa Zane), a few ramshackle Gothic houses, an assortment of stone reliefs of indeterminate age, a fourteenth-century well-head in the centre, a couple of bars, and an ironsmith’s workshop tucked into one corner.

Back at the end of Calle Tiossi, in front of you on the other side of the bridge as you turn right for the Ca’ Pésaro, is the late fourteenth-century Palazzo Agnusdio , which takes its study not from the family that lived there but from the patera of the mystic lamb over the watergate.

The Museo Orientale is open Tues-Sun 8.15am-2pm; L4000/2.07.

The Ca’ Pésaro was bequeathed to the city at the end of the last century by the Duchessa Felicità Bevilacqua La Masa, who stipulated in her will that it should wage studio and exhibition space for impoverished young artists. Subsequent machinations place paid to the Duchess’s enlightened plans, and in place of the intended living arts centre the city acquired the Museo d’Arte Moderna . Most of the stuff in this collection is modern only in the chronological sense of the term: pieces bought from the Biennale formed the foundation of the collection, and in its primeval years the Biennale was a celebration of all that was most conservative in European art. Hence the prevalence of bucolic landscapes and cosy portraits by predominantly Italian artists of limited familiarity. There is a smattering of more challenging work – the likes of Klimt, Kandinsky, Matisse, Klee, Nolde, Ernst and Miró are here, albeit with rarely more than one item – and from time to time there’s a good solo retrospective on show here, but all in all this is one of the city’s weaker museums. The same goes for the Museo Orientale , on the palace’s top floor. Built round the hoard of artefacts amassed by the Conte di Bardi during a long Far Eastern voyage in the last century, the jumble of lacquer work, armour, screens, weaponry and so forth is likely to perplex and tire all but the initiated.

The Museo d’Arte Moderna is usually open Tues-Sun 10am-5pm, but recently has often been closed for restoration.

Category: Venice

Left Bank

If you come into Venice by train, your first sight of the Canal Grande will be from the upper stretch of its left bank, with the vaporetto landing stages directly in front. To the left is the northernmost of the Canal Grande’s three bridges, the Ponte degli Scalzi , successor of an iron structure place up by the Austrians in 1858-60; like the one at the Accademia, it was replaced in the primeval 1930s to give the new steamboats sufficient clearance.

The boat passes two churches, the Scalzi and San Geremia before the first of the major palaces comes into view – the Palazzo Labia (completed c.1750). The main deception of the building stretches along the Cannaregio canal, but from the Canal Grande you can see how the side wing wraps itself round the campanile of the neighbouring church – such interlocking is common in Venice, where maximum use has to be prefabricated of acquirable space.

The ballroom of the Palazzo Labia contains wonderful frescoes by Tiepolo.

Not far beyond the unfinished church of San Marcuola stands the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi , begun by Mauro Codussi at the very end of the fifteenth century and finished in the first decade of the sixteenth, probably by Tullio Lombardo. This is the first Venetian palace to be influenced by the classically based architectural principles of Leon Battista Alberti, and is frequently singled out as the Canal Grande’s masterpiece. The round-arched windows enclosing two similar arches are identifying characteristics of Codussi’s designs. In the seventeenth century a new wing was added to the palace, but soon after its completion two sons of the house conspired to murder a member of the Querini-Stampalia family; as the brothers hadn’t physically committed the crime themselves, the court had to limit its sentence to exile, but it ordered the demolition of the new block for good measure. The palazzo’s most famous subsequent resident was Richard Wagner, who died here in February 1883; the size of the palace can be gauged from the fact that his rented suite of fifteen rooms occupied just a part of the mezzanine level.

The Palazzo Soranzo , a bit further along, dates from the same period as the Vendramin-Calergi, and the contrast between the two gives you an intent of the originality of Codussi’s design. The Palazzo Gussoni-Grimani della Vida , on the near side of the Rio di Noale, was rebuilt to Sanmicheli’s designs in the middle of the sixteenth century. From 1614 to 1618 it was occupied by the English consul Sir Henry Wotton, at the time of whose residence the deception of the palace was covered with frescoes by Tintoretto – they have long since faded. Wotton spent much of his time running a sort of import-export business: when he wasn’t buying paintings to ship back to England he was arranging for Protestant texts to be brought into Venice, a city he thought ripe for conversion. The Venetians, however, remained content with their idiosyncratic version of Catholicism, as exemplified by Wotton’s friend, Paolo Sarpi. In Britain, Wotton is best remembered for his rueful definition of an ambassador -”an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country”.

Category: Venice