The church of the Holy Spirit is a religious building in the city of Venice, located in the Dorsoduro district.
On the area of the current church, the monastery of the Augustinian
nuns of the Holy Spirit was founded in 1483, with an annexed internal
church not overlooking the Giudecca canal.
From the outset, the
monastery was distinguished by scandals linked to the conduct of the
nuns, documented both by procedural documents and by Giuseppe Tassini in
Curiosità Veneziane.
In the first decades of the 1500s, when the
foundations of the Zattere on the Giudecca canal were built, the
monastery was also radically restructured: the old church was destroyed
to make way for the cloister and in 1506 construction of the current
building began, with the facade facing the canal. At the same time, next
to the church and separated from it by the calle del Monastero, the
building of the Scuola dello Spirito Santo was also built, again with a
facade on the canal.
The church is a branch of the Gesuati
Church, of which it belongs to the parish. It is very rarely used for
ceremonies such as commemorations of the deceased or weddings, at the
request of the family.
The facade has a poorly proportioned structure: the portal and the
two gabled side windows on the ground floor denote an apparently
wide-ranging initial project, while the second order of large windows
and the roof structure have decidedly reduced proportions and are much
less well-maintained in the finishing touches, thus giving the
impression of a project carried out in two phases or completed hastily
or forcedly earlier than expected.
The internal structure, very
bare, has a single nave and the altars, dating back to the 17th century,
are placed against the walls. The main altar is decorated on the sides
by a pair of twisted columns, following the typical Baroque pattern.
Some Baroque paintings complete the internal architecture.
The
internal part of the facade is occupied almost entirely by the funerary
monument of the Paruta family, of which an exponent, a Paolo, a
historian by profession, is buried inside the church.