The church of Sant'Andrea della Zirada is a religious building in the city of Venice, located in the Santa Croce district and formerly the site of a monastery.
In 1329 the four noblewomen Francesca Corraro, Elisabetta Gradenigo,
Elisabetta Soranzo and Maddalena Malipiero were allowed to found an
abbey on the place called Cao de Zirada. Despite the opposition of the
nearby nuns of Santa Chiara, the works were inaugurated in 1331. In 1346
the two benefactresses and other followers gave life to the monastery,
embracing the rule of Saint Augustine. Subjected to the patronage of the
Doge of Venice, their work consisted in feeding the needy, but from 1684
they only had the obligation to welcome three lay sisters a year without
the disbursement of a dowry.
According to the chronicles, the
church was built in the first half of the fourteenth century with
funding from the Bonzio family. It was profoundly restored in 1475,
reconsecrated in 1502 by the archbishop of Corinth Giulio Brocchetta and
internally remodeled in the seventeenth century. It also underwent other
interventions in the following centuries, but kept the original Gothic
facade.
The monastery was later suppressed and largely
demolished, while the church, which has become a parish subsidiary, is
consecrated but not open to worship.
In the early twentieth
century the buildings of Piazzale Roma were placed against it, further
disfiguring the completely distorted context; since 2009, the People
Mover monorail has also passed by on elevated infrastructure.
The entrance with the Istrian stone portal is interesting. The interior consists of a single nave with a lowered ceiling; above the entrance there is a seventeenth-century hanging choir ("barco"), with fourteenth-century columns and Gothic barbicans. The most valuable works are a dead Christ between San Carlo Borromeo and angels by Domenico Tintoretto, a Sant'Agostino with two angels by Paris Bordon and a San Girolamo by Paolo Veronese.