Venice:San Polo:Churches

Frari Baldassare Longhena, Jacopo Sansovino, Marco Cozzi 14th-15th Centuries
		A pantheon? A museum? Well: a big church with some big tombs and works by a lot of the Renaissance biggies. History The Franciscan friars (or Frari) came to Venice in 1222, but had no permanent home until Doge Jacopo Tiepolo gave them some land in 1236, adjacent to the abandoned Benedictine abbey they were inhabiting. The church that they built in 1250, extending the abbey, was much smaller than the one we see today, and faced in the opposite direction. The current church was built in the mid-14th Century. It’s plan is attributed to Fra Scipione Bon, who has a tomb in the church. The exuberant, but brick-plain, Gothic façade contrasts with the more restrained façade on the Dominican’s San Zanipolo, built at the same time. Stand in the campo at it’s north-eastern front –the one with the canal running through it - to see the sequence of three entrances and three oculi windows (below left) with the stout campanile rising above the middle one. In the Campo San Rocco at the other end you can admire the Gothic apse, as you indulge in a gelati and listen to the buskers. It’s mouldings were said by Ruskin to be the source of similar designs on the Palazzo Ducale. Interior The twelve huge round pillars between the nave and the aisles represent the apostles, but the division of the nave and aisles is very unobtrusive, giving the impression of a single space dissected up high by tie-beams. The tie-beams are there because of the brick vaulting – a chancey choice of material in a sinking city. And here the bricks have been painted to mask their humble nature. Dominating the centre of the church is the dark wood of the monumental monks’ choir (a rare survival in Venice) separated from the nave by a carved marble screen, said to be the work of Pietro Lombardo. The choir stalls feature fine marquetry by Marco Cozzi, depicting views of an ‘ideal city’. The nave features some mighty overpowering tombs, the most exhausting being the one for Doge Giovanni Pesaro, designed by Longhena, with the four huge moors bent under a weight of allegorical figures under a canopy of carved ‘brocade’. Rarely can sculpture be so accurately described is ‘doing your head in’. The pyramidal tomb to Canova is a far calmer and lovelier thing, if not exactly unwacky either. His heart is preserved behind that open door in the centre, although the rest of him is buried in Possagno. From the Chapter House, beyond the Sacristy, it’s possible to glimpse the Cloister of the Holy Trinity, one of the two cloisters of the original convent which have housed the Venetian state archives since 1814 (after a period, post-suppression, of use as a barracks). The other is called the Cloister of St Anthony and both are unfortunately usually closed to visitors. Art highlights Claims are often made for the Frari as almost a museum of Renaissance art in Venice, and it certainly contains some of the finest church art in town. Titian’s enormous Assumption over the main altar dominates the church, and is said to be the largest altarpiece in Venice. Ruskin said that this painting was 'not one whit the better for being either large or gaudy in colour' and complained of its excess of 'fox colour.' The friars who commissioned it had their doubts too - telling Titian that his apostles were too big - but they stopped complaining when Charles V expressed an interest in buying it. It spent some time during the nineteenth century as the highlight of the Accademia gallery before returning here after the First World War. Along with this early triumph - it was one of Titian's first altarpieces - there's the slightly later and much quieter, but no less impressive Pesaro altarpiece, which Ruskin thought to be the artist's best work in Venice. These career highlights, along with the painter’s tomb, gives rise to this being known as Titian’s church. There’s also a Giovanni Bellini altarpiece to contemplate at length, a Virgin and Child with Saints (also known as the Frari Madonna) which has that same power to calm as his later altarpiece in San Zaccaria, despite a somewhat overpowering contemporary frame, and a bit too much distance between it and us. Bellini was reputedly just not good at painting movement, which 'limitation' gives us something to rest in front of (chairs are provided) after his pupil Titian’s more kinetic works. Two sculptures of John the Baptist, one by Donatello and the other by Sansovino, are impressive, as are works by Bartolomeo Vivarini, and his nephew Alvise. Campanile Built 1396, and said to be amongst the tallest in Venice. Opening times Monday to Saturday: 9.00 to 6.00 Sundays: 1.00 to 6.00 A Chorus Church Vaporetto San Toma
San Cassiano
Lost Art The San Cassiano Altarpiece by Antonello da Messina (right) is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. Ruskin says This church must on no account be missed, as it contains three Tintorets, of which one, the "Crucifixion," is among the finest in Europe. There is nothing worth notice in the building itself, except the jamb of an ancient door (left in the Renaissance building, facing the canal), which has been given among the examples of Byzantine jambs; and the traveller may therefore devote his entire attention to the three pictures in the chancel.
San Giacometto
		Opening times Monday to Saturday: 9.30-12.00, 4.00-6.00 Vaporetto San Silvestro or Rialto
San Giovanni Elemosinario Antonio Abandi (Scarpagnino)
Lost art Previous Pordenone frescos on exterior of apse and in cupola reported, but no trace remains. Opening times Monday to Saturday: 10.00 to 5.00 Sundays: closed A Chorus Church Vaporetto San Silvestro or Rialto
San Giovanni Evangelista Bernardino Maccaruzzi 1758-9
		A church very much overshadowed by its scuola, a gem of the renaissance admired even by Ruskin. History Founded in 970 by the Badoer family. Rebuilt in 1443-75 and then in 1758-9 by Bernardino Maccaruzzi. Interior Contains sarcophagi of the Badoer family, and a Tintoretto Crucifixion. Campanile Also rebuilt by Maccaruzzi. Vaporetto San Toma
San Polo
A church that's 'seen life'. History This church, dedicated to the Apostle Paul, was founded in 837 by the doges Pietro Tradonico and Orso Partecipazio and rebuilt in the 12th and 15th centuries. Some heavy-handed restoration and additions in the early years of the 19th Century by David Rossi have recently been partly reversed revealing, for example, the 15th Century wooden ship's keel roof and restoring the rose window which dates from the same period. The church The 15th century work resulted in the gothic windows and the impressive South doorway by the Bon workshop that visitors enter from the cramped and busy calle. The facade is now hidden by the Oratorio del Crocifisso, but from the nearby Corte de Cafetier you can see the Gothic rose windows with trefoil arches and irregular quatrefoils. The apses face onto Campo San Polo and have several carvings, including (right) the 14th Century relief of The Enthroned Madonna and Child with St Peter and St Paul. The interior The ship's keel ceiling dominates San Polo's somewhat knocked-about seeming interior. It's pleasingly rough and calm, and somewhat dark at most times. Art highlights Aside from a Veronese and a couple of Tintorettos, including a dramatic Last supper, there's five by Palma il Giovane, of course. More memorable is an impressive sequence of paintings of fourteen Stations of the Cross by Giandomenico Tiepolo, son of the more famous Giambattista. The son seems to have rebelled against his father's exuberance in life and use of colour in his art - these works are paler and much more melancholy than anything by his dad. (Comparison can be made with Giambattista's The Virgin appears to Saint John of Nepomuk* in the main church.) He painted them whilst still in his early 20s from 1747-49 and they are rare examples of his being allowed to work alone. They fill the narthex of what would once have been the main entrance at the back of the church, with ceiling frescos by the same artist. Campanile Built in 1362, the doorway features two carved lions, one with a snake in its mouth, the other with a human head in its paws (see right) . The latter is popularly thought to be a reference to the punishment of Doge Marin Faliero for his plotting against the Venetian Rebublic. Although it's also said to represent the head of condotiere Count Carmagnola, beheaded by the Republic in 1402. Local colour In the calle between the campanile and the church doorway Lorenzino de'Medici (also known as Lorenzaccio or bad Lorenzino), along with his friend Alessandro Soderini, was murdered in 1546/1548? by an assassin sent by his cousin Cosimo de'Medici, Duke of Florence. His lover's house was nearby. Opening times Monday to Saturday: 10.00 to 5.00 Sundays: closed A Chorus Church Vaporetto San Toma or San Silvestro *Saint John of Nepomuk is a national saint of Bohemia. He was the confessor to the Queen of Bohemia and for refusing to reveal secrets of her confession he was chucked from a bridge in Prague in 1393. He was canonised in 1729 and is the patron saint of silence, and also of protection from floods and calumnies. He is sometimes painted with a finger to his lips or a padlock on his mouth. In the painting here he 'consecrates his tongue' to the Virgin. There is a worn 18th Century statue of him on the fondamenta at the junction of the Grand Canal with the Cannaregio Canal.
San Rocco
		Vaporetto San Toma
San Silvestro
Lost art Veronese's fine The Adoration of the Kings, now in the National Gallery in London, was painted for San Silvestro where it remained until the 19th century rebuilding, after which it was found to be too big. Giorgione died in the house opposite (no. 1022) during the plague of 1510. Vaporetto San Silvestro
San Toma

Sant’Aponal