Santa Maria della Salute (or Chiesa della Salute or simply La Salute) is a basilica in Venice erected in the Punta della Dogana area, from where it stands out against the panorama of the San Marco Basin and the Grand Canal. Designed by Baldassare Longhena with attention to Palladio's models, it is one of the best expressions of Venetian Baroque architecture. Its construction represents an ex voto to the Madonna by the Venetians for the liberation from the plague which decimated the population between 1630 and 1631, as had previously happened for the church of the Redeemer. The cult became so ingrained in Venice that the Virgin Mary was added to the list of patron saints of the city of Venice. In December 1921, Pope Benedict XV elevated it to the rank of minor basilica.
The plague was brought by an ambassador of the Duke of Mantua Carlo I
Gonzaga Nevers, who was interned in the Lazzaretto Vecchio, but it was
enough for him to come into contact with a carpenter to infect the city,
starting from Campo San Lio.
On 22 October 1630 the vow of the
patriarch Giovanni Tiepolo: «solemn vow to erect in this City and
dedicate a Church to the Most Holy Virgin, naming it SANTA MARIA DELLA
SALUTE, and that every year on the day that this City will be published
free from the present evil, His Serenity and his Successors will go
solemnly with the Senate to visit the same Church in perpetual memory of
the Public gratitude for so much benefit». On 26 October in Piazza San
Marco the Doge Nicolò Contarini, the clergy and the people gathered to
pray. When the plague ended, 80,000 Venetians were dead, and 600,000 in
the territory of the Serenissima. Among the dead, the doge and the
patriarch.
To make room for the new church, it was decided to
demolish a suppressed religious complex (the Church of the Santissima
Trinità with convent and school) adjacent to the Punta da Màr, the
customs house of Venice. In order to erect the Basilica in that place, a
large number of poles driven into the ground and extensive land
reclamation were necessary. Already on November 28, 1631, the first
thanksgiving pilgrimage took place.
The construction was
entrusted after a competition to Baldassare Longhena, who had designed a
church "in the form of a crown to be dedicated to this Virgin", and was
finished when the patriarch Alvise Sagredo blessed it on 9 November
1687.
Every year on November 21, the day of the Presentation of
the Blessed Virgin Mary, the feast of the Madonna della Salute is
celebrated in which the Venetians cross a bridge, for centuries made of
boats, now floating fixed on poles, which goes from San Marco to the
basilica and they go there to pray. Together with the Festa del
Redentore, it is still today one of the most loved and attended popular
festivals by the Venetians. On this occasion, the Venetians
traditionally consume the "castradina", a mutton-based dish.
External
The central body has an octagonal shape on which rests a
large hemispherical dome, then surrounded by six smaller chapels. The
refined spiral volutes stabilized by statues act as buttresses for the
dome, on whose lantern stands the statue of the Virgin.
The
church extends towards the south in the smaller volume of the presbytery
with lateral apses, covered in turn by a lower dome and flanked by two
bell towers: these elements appear impressive to anyone who travels
along the Rio Terà dei Catecumeni, which until the beginning of the 20th
century was the only land access to the church. In this way Longhena
created, taking up Palladio's solutions, different elevations depending
on whether the temple was observed from the Grand Canal, from the
underlying Campo della Salute, from the San Marco Basin, from the
Giudecca Canal or from the Rio Terà.
Internal
The spacious,
centralized interior is amply illuminated by the thermal windows of the
six side chapels and by the large windows of the drum of the dome, with
a diameter of 21.55 metres. The light highlights the pavement in
polychrome marble tiles.
The internal decoration includes,
starting from the right side as you enter:
-on the first altar,
known as the Presentation of Mary, we find an altarpiece by Luca
Giordano: the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple.
-on the
second altar, dedicated to the Assumption, we find the Assumption of the
Virgin by Luca Giordano and San Gerolamo Miani, sculpture by Giovanni
Maria Morlaiter.
-on the third altar, known as the Nativity of
Mary, we find another work by Luca Giordano: the birth of the Virgin.
The presbytery and the sacristy follow. Continuing the path to the
left:
- on the first altar, known as the Descent of the Holy
Spirit, is the Descent of the Holy Spirit by Tiziano Vecelio.
-on
the second altar, dedicated to St. Anthony, we find the altarpiece of
St. Anthony and Venice as a suppliant, by Pietro Liberi.
- on the
third and last altar, dedicated to the Annunciation of Mary, there is
the altarpiece, attributed to Pietro Liberi, entitled the Annunciation.
The presbytery and the high altar designed by Longhena himself
dominate everything. The sculptural group on the altar represents a
Madonna with child, to represent the Salute which defends Venice from
the plague. It is the work of a Flemish sculptor very active in Venice,
whose name is usually rendered as Giusto Le Court or Jouste de Corte
born in Ypres in 1627 and died in Venice in 1679. The altar houses a
Byzantine icon, the Madonna della Salute or Mesopanditissa, which comes
from the island of Crete and was brought to Venice by Francesco Morosini
in 1670 when they had to cede the island to the Turks. The main altar is
largely sculpted and decorated by Giusto Le Court, following the formula
of sculptural groups by Girolamo Campagna in San Giorgio Maggiore and in
Redentore. The altar consists of a Madonna and Child who intercedes with
a kneeling figure, Venice, while on the right the figure of the Plague,
in the form of a heretical apparition, is about to fall into the void.
Le Court's altar is pompously extroverted, but a correct definition
might be that it is a blending of traditional Venetian vocabulary with
elements of the international Baroque.
In the side chapels are
the canvas Descent of the Holy Spirit by Tiziano Vecellio and the altar
of the Assumption with the altarpiece by Luca Giordano, the statue of
San Girolamo Miani by Giovanni Maria Morlaiter and other sculptural
works by Tommaso Rues.
The dome is furnished with wooden statues
representing the prophets, recently attributed to the sculptor Tomaso
Rues.
In the church there is an organ built by Francesco Antonio Dacci in
1782-83 and modified by Giacomo Bazzani in 1819, 1825 and 1845. Located
on the choir loft at the back of the apse within a room built close to
the perimeter wall, with the use of three arches originally constituting
as many large windows, it has a facade of 51 pipes, divided into three
bays (17/17/17), the central one with a cusp with wings, from G–1, with
a shield-shaped upper lip; the cusp-shaped lateral spans are made up of
real but not sounding pipes.
Both keyboards are original. The
upper keyboard has 59 keys (C-1- D5 with short first octave, real
extension of 55 notes from G-1); the lower fingerboard has 30 keys
(A2-D5), with the “diatonic” covered in boxwood adorned with black dots
and sunken faceplates. The division between ||Basses and ||Sopranos
occurs at the G#2-A2 keys. The pedalboard, lectern-like, has 20 keys
(C1-B2 with short first octave), constantly joined to the upper keyboard
with an additional pedal that drives the drum. The stops are operated by
knob tie-rods arranged on two columns on the right (for the First Organ)
and on one on the left of the keyboards (for the Second Organ).
Numerous other works by Titian enrich the sacristy: here it is
possible to find an early work such as San Marco enthroned, with saints
Cosma, Damiano, Sebastiano and Rocco (1511-12) together with later works
on the ceiling: Cain and Abel, The sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac, David
and Goliath (the latter work was damaged by a fire that broke out on 30
August 2010 in the adjacent seminary).
Also in the sacristy are
The Wedding at Cana, a large canvas by Tintoretto (1561), and works by
other important artists: Alessandro Varotari known as "il Padovanino",
Pietro Liberi, Giuseppe Porta known as "il Salviati", Giovanni Battista
Salvi known as "the Sassoferrato", Palma il Giovane, Marco d'Oggiono.
The layout of the Basilica is octagonal and recalls, through the number 8 (symbol of Salvation and Hope), the concept of Stella Maris ('Star of the sea'), derived from the eight-pointed star present in the project. This appellation alludes to the opening verse of the hymn Ave Maris Stella, where Mary is metaphorically seen as the morning star who guides sailors in the sea and leads them to the port of salvation. The shape of the dome of the basilica symbolically recalls the crown of the Virgin. In addition to the eight sides and six side chapels of the main building, a lower dome separates the choir from the altar. By adding the eight sides of the church to the lower dome, the choir and the altar, the number 11 is obtained, which symbolizes Strength, that of Faith that the Venetians placed in the Virgin Mary to free them from the plague.