SANTI GIOVANNI E PAOLO

Description

Essentials about Santi Giovanni e Paolo in brief

With a length of almost 100 meters, Santi Giovanni e Paolo is the largest church in Venice. Together with Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, it is also the most important sacred building of the Venetian Gothic of the 14th and 15th centuries. The church, called “San Zanipolo” in Venetian, is one of the monastery churches of the Dominicans and was the preferred burial church of the Doges of Venice as well as numerous noble families. Incidentally, the church patrons are not the two apostles of the same name, but John and Paul of Rome, two martyrs from the time of Constantine the Great.

The architecture of Santi Giovanni e Paolo

Santi Giovanni e Paolo is a three-nave columned basilica with a transept adjoined by a central large choir chapel and two small ones. All the choir chapels have a polygonal end. Except for the crossing, which is domed, all parts have ribbed vaults.

The church interior is 96 meters long, 28 meters wide in the nave, the transept is 43 meters wide and the vault height is about 35 meters. The church is a brick building. Ornamental elements on the exterior, such as the frames of the oculi, the friezes, the crown-like cornice and the high tabernacles on the facade, as well as the portal are made of Istrian stone. The stone vaults are made of plastered tubular mesh in order to reduce the weight of the structure due to the problematic subsoil. The structure is stabilized by wooden tie rods, as in other Venetian churches.

The history of Santi Giovanni e Paolo

In 1245, Doge Jacopo Tiepolo donated a piece of land to the Dominican Order for the construction of a church, far from the Frari Church, the mendicant Franciscan order that competed with the Dominicans, who had already acquired their building plot in 1234. This first Zanipolo church was structurally advanced by 1258. But the church soon became too small, so it was decided to build a new one, whose works began in 1333.

The apse was finished before 1368, because the oldest tomb in the church, that of Marco Giustinian in the Cappella di Santa Maddalena to the right of the presbytery, dates from that year. A donation from the procurators of San Marco allowed the acceleration of the construction of the church. In 1417 the nave was vaulted and in 1430 the church was consecrated. In 1437, the wealthy brotherhood of goldsmiths and silk merchants, the Scuola San Marco, purchased a neighboring plot of land for the construction of a brotherhood building and made generous donations to the Dominicans for the further construction of the church.

Around the middle of the 15th century the choir was built and at the end of the 15th century the dome was completed. Only in 1458, thanks to donations, the portal was commissioned from the famous architect Bartolomeo Bon, for which ancient columns from Torcello were used. The high tracery windows in the choir, with two lanes and divided by bars, were made in 1471 and 1510.

Between 1575 and 1582 the Rosary Chapel (Cappella del Rosario) was donated by the Brotherhood of the Rosary to commemorate the naval battle of Lepanto. However, this chapel was destroyed by fire in 1867. Between 1638 and 1663 the main altar was built according to the designs of Baldassare Longhena and Francesco Cavrioli. In 1682 the choir stalls were removed so that the large church space could be fully appreciated. At the beginning of the 18th century the Cappella di San Domenico was added.

Zanipolo was financed mainly by donations. Thus, the construction of family chapels and burial grounds in churches was always associated with regular donations for masses, which were also continued by the families and heirs to ensure the memory of the deceased.

The tombs of Santi Giovanni e Paolo

Santi Giovanni e Paolo was the preferred burial place of the Venetian Doges. In the church, among many other funerary monuments of Venetian nobles, there are alone 26 Doge tombs from the Gothic to the Baroque period. The first doge to be buried there was Jacopo Tiepolo, patron of the Dominicans, in 1249. His simple marble tomb is located on the outer wall of the façade. Since the middle of the 15th century, the leading men of the Republic of Venice were buried in the church. Also some artists, such as Giovanni Bellini, Gentile, Lorenzo Lotto and Jacopo Palma the Younger found their last resting place here.

The equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni

Next to the church, on a pedestal almost ten meters high and surrounded by columns, stands the equestrian statue of the army commander Bartolomeo Colleoni, cast in 1496. Colleoni, who fought many battles for Venice during his life, appointed the city as heir to his considerable fortune – but with the condition in his will that a statue of him be erected in front of St. Mark’s Basilica. The Venetians were generally not very fond of the cult of personality, as evidenced by the fact that one finds very few statues of important personalities in the city. The city saw Colleoni’s request as an unparalleled affront; however, they did not want to give up the fortune of the commander, which had been looted during his lifetime. In the end, Colleoni’s testamentary provisions were interpreted in such a way that the commander did not mean the Basilica of San Marco, but the Scuola di San Marco, i.e. the confraternity next to the church of San Zanipolo.

The sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio was commissioned to create the model. After his death in 1488, it was cast in 1496 by Alessandro Leopardi, who also built the stone pedestal. The statue, one of the most famous equestrian statues of all time, along with the ancient equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, still stands in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo.