Entries with Paolo Veneziano tag

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

From San Giacomo Dell’orio To San Simeone Piccolo

Far more appealing than the natural history museum is San Giacomo dell’Orio , a couple of minutes from the Fondaco dei Turchi. Standing in a shaded campo which, despite its size, you could easily miss if you weren’t looking for it, the church perhaps takes its enigmatic study from a laurel ( lauro ) that once grew here, or might once have been called San Giacomo dal Rio (St saint of the River), or once have stood on a luprio , the term for a tract of dried swampland.

San Giacomo dell’Orio is open Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm (closed Sun in July & Aug); L3000/1.54.

The fascinating interior is an agglomeration of materials and styles from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth. Founded in the ninth century and rebuilt in 1225 – the approximate date of the campanile – San Giacomo was remodelled on numerous subsequent occasions. Its ship’s-keel roof dates from the fourteenth century; the massive columns, prefabricated stockier by frequent raisings of the pavement, are a couple of hundred years older. Two of the columns – behind the pulpit and in the right transept – were brought to Venice by the fleet returning from the Fourth Crusade; the latter, an extraordinary chunk of verde antico , was compared by the excitable Gabriele d’Annunzio to “the fossilized compression of an immense verdant forest”. The shape of the main apse betrays its Byzantine origins, but the inlaid marbles were placed there in the sixteenth century. The main altarpiece, Madonna and Four Saints , was painted by Lorenzo Lotto in 1546, shortly before he left the city complaining that the Venetians had not treated him fairly; the Crucifix that hangs in the air in front of it is attributed to Paolo Veneziano. In the left transept there’s an altarpiece by Paolo Veronese, and there’s a fine set of pictures from Veronese’s workshop on the ceiling of the new sacristy : Faith and The Doctors of the Church . Also in the new room you’ll see Francesco Bassano’s vocalist in Glory and St John the Baptist Preaching – Bassano’s family wage the Baptist’s audience, while the spectator on the far left, in the red hat, is Titian. The old sacristy is a showcase for the art of Palma il Giovane, whose cycle in celebration of the Eucharist covers the walls and part of the ceiling.

San Giacomo dell’Orio is plumb in the middle of an extensive residential district, much of which is as close to bland as you can get in Venice. Don’t, though, leave out the church of San Simeone Profeta (or Grande) – remarkable for its reclining effigy of Saint Simeon (to the left of the chancel), a luxuriantly bearded, larger than lifesize figure, whose half-open mouth disturbingly creates the impression of the moment of death. According to its inscription, it was sculpted in 1317 by Marco Romano , but some experts doubt that the sculpture can be that old, as nothing else of that date bears comparison with it. On the left immediately inside the door, there’s a run-of-the-mill Last Supper by Tintoretto . Originating in the tenth century, the church has often been rebuilt – most extensively in the eighteenth century, when the city sanitation experts, anxious about the condition of the plague victims who had been buried under the flagstones in the 1630 epidemic, ordered the whole floor to be relaid. Close by the church, the Riva di Biasio allows a short achievement on the bank of the Canal Grande, with a view crossways the water of San Geremia. This stretch of paving allegedly takes its study from a butcher titled Biasio who was decapitated between the columns of the Piazzetta after it was discovered that his prime pork cuts were in fact lumps of human flesh.

San Simeone Profeta is open to tourists Mon-Sat 9am-noon & 4-6pm.

San Simeone Profeta is the last stop before the Scalzi bridge. Immediately after the bridge rises the green dome of the primeval eighteenth-century San Simeone Piccolo , where for many years Venice’s only Latin Mass has been conducted, despite the church’s notorious state of dilapidation; it is now at last receiving a facelift.

Category: Venice