Santa Maria Dei Miracoli, Venice
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Santa Maria dei Miracoli is a church in the
sestiere A (; : , ) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions () and provinces (). The can also have the title of (). Formed a ...
of
Cannaregio Cannaregio () is the northernmost of the six historic ''sestieri of Venice''. It is the second largest ''sestiere'' by land area and the largest by population, with 13,169 people . Isola di San Michele, the historic cemetery island, is associate ...
, in
Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...
,
Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
.


Architecture and restoration

Also known as the "marble church", it is one of the best examples of the early Venetian
Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
including colored marble, a false colonnade on the exterior walls (
pilaster In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...
s), and a semicircular pediment. The organisation Save Venice Inc. restored the church over a period of seven years, from 1990 to 1997 (after several years of preliminary research). The treatments focussed on the marble sheeting and sculptural decoration of both the exterior and interior of the church. The marble cladding contained 14% salt, and was on the point of bursting, when restorers began the desalination and cleaning process. All marble cladding was removed, and cleaned in stainless steel tanks, in a solution of distilled water. Additionally, the campaign worked in the coffered ceiling, which was made up of fifty-two wooden panels depicting saints and prophets. The cleaning led to the rediscovery of frescoes of sibyls on the spandrels of the ceiling. Nearly every part of the church was examined and treated, including the intarsia doors in the presbytery, the bronze statues and candelabra of the high altar, and the wooden panel of the Madonna from which the church got its name. The restoration was calculated to cost 1 million dollars, the final cost was 4 million dollars. The main altar is reached by a series of steps. The circular facade windows recall
Donato Bramante Donato Bramante (1444 – 11 April 1514), born as Donato di Pascuccio d'Antonio and also known as Bramante Lazzari, was an Italian architect and painter. He introduced Renaissance architecture to Milan and the High Renaissance style to Rom ...
's churches in
Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
.


History

Built between 1481 and 1489 by
Pietro Lombardo Monument of the Doge Pietro Mocenigo 1481 :''Pietro Lombardo is also the Italian version of the name of the theologian Peter Lombard.'' Pietro Lombardo (1435–1515) was an Italian Renaissance sculptor and architect; born in Carona (Ticino), he ...
to house a miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary. The plans for the church were expanded in 1484 to include the construction of a new convent for nuns of St. Clare to the east. The convent was connected to the gallery of the church by an enclosed walkway that was later destroyed. The interior is enclosed by a wide
barrel vault A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...
, with a single nave. The nave is dominated by an ornamental marble stair rising between two pulpits, with statues by
Tullio Lombardo Tullio Lombardo (c. 1455 – November 17, 1532), also known as Tullio Solari, was an Italian Renaissance sculptor. He was the brother of Antonio Lombardo and son of Pietro Lombardo. The Lombardo family worked together to sculpt famous Catholic ...
,
Alessandro Vittoria Alessandro Vittoria funerary monument, San Zaccaria, Venice Alessandro Vittoria (1525 – 27 May 1608) was an Italian Mannerist sculptor of the Venetian school, "one of the main representatives of the Venetian classical style" and rivalling ...
and Niccolò di Pietro. The vaulted ceiling is divided into fifty
coffer A coffer (or coffering) in architecture is a series of sunken panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault. A series of these sunken panels was often used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, al ...
s decorated with paintings of prophets, a work by Girolamo Pennacchi's contemporaries, Vincenzo dalle Destre and
Lattanzio da Rimini Lattanzio da Rimini (active 1492–1505) was an Italian painter primarily active in a Renaissance art style in Rimini and Venice. He is documented as helping Giovanni Bellini Giovanni Bellini (; c. 1430 – 29 November 1516) was an Italian Ren ...
.


See also

*
History of medieval Arabic and Western European domes The early domes of the Middle Ages, particularly in those areas recently under Byzantine Empire, Byzantine control, were an extension of earlier Roman architecture. The domed church architecture of Italy from the sixth to the eighth centuries fol ...
*
History of Italian Renaissance domes Italian Renaissance domes were designed during the Renaissance period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy. Beginning in Florence, the style spread to Rome and Venice and made the combination of dome, drum, and barrel vaults standard ...
*
History of early modern period domes Domes built in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries relied primarily on empirical techniques and oral traditions rather than the architectural treatises of the time, but the study of dome structures changed radically due to developments in mathemat ...


External links


Churches in CannaregioSanta Maria dei Miracoli


References

{{Authority control Buildings and structures completed in 1489 Churches completed in the 1480s Maria dei Miracoli, Venice Maria dei Miracoli, Venice Renaissance architecture in Venice