The church of San Stae (or church of Sant'Eustachio e Compagni
martiri) is a Catholic place of worship in Venice, formerly the seat of
the parish of the same name, located in the Santa Croce district, in the
homonymous field, and dedicated to Sant'Eustachio.
The church is
part of the Chorus Venezia association.
The origin of the church, initially founded under the title of
Sant'Isaiah the Prophet, is still to be clarified. According to Giuseppe
Cappelletti, it was built by Obelario, the first bishop of Olivolo,
towards the end of the eighth century. The chronicles, however, state
that it was founded in 966 by the Tron, Zusto and Adoaldo families.
However, the chronicler Andrea Dandolo, who described the serious fire
of 1105, does not mention it and the first certain testimony is a
document of 1127, where it is remembered as a filial parish of San
Pietro. In 1331 it is instead remembered as a collegiate church.
According to the reports of the pastoral visits of the eighteenth
century, San Stae was a populous, rich and vital parish and its parish
priests were also canons of the basilica of San Marco.
At the end
of the seventeenth century the church, although restored repeatedly, was
in dilapidation and in 1681 the prosecutors of the fabbricceria had to
make the decision to rebuild it. Thus they appointed four deputies (two
nobles and two citizens) in order to deliberate together with the parish
priest what was necessary. The first decision was to change the
orientation of the church: no longer the traditional one towards the
east but with a more modern spirit scenically facing the Grand Canal.
This decision was linked to the legate of Doge Alvise II Mocenigo, who
died in 1709 and was buried in the church itself, who left 20,000 ducats
for the construction of the facade. With Napoleon's edicts, it became
the rectory of San Cassiano, but returned to the parish in 1953.
However, it was suppressed again in 1965. From the following year it
became an independent rectory.
Facade
The Baroque facade, but of Palladian inspiration, was
built according to the 1709 design by Domenico Rossi, the one chosen
from the twelve projects sent to the competition. In reaction to the
self-celebratory fashion of the previous century, the last example
of which is the monumental Valier "mausoleum" at Santi Giovanni e
Paolo, the will of Doge Alvise II Mocenigo, with whose bequest the
construction was financed, provided that it should not bear any
celebratory elements neither personal nor dynastic, he specified in
fact: «with our dinar we would finish off the church of San Stae by
erecting a noble façade corresponding to the structure of the
universally praised church, and as it was always our intention that
there was no weapon, statue or inscription he could take our name,
so, continuing in the same sentiments, we want him to be compensated
for with our dinar, without any memory of our name".
The
structure is tripartite by a giant order of semi-columns placed on
high bases and concluded on the sides by two short wings - lower and
slightly set back - in the smaller order. From the top of the
extreme beams of the wings - formed by pillars and semi-columns
placed directly on the plinth - a rhythmic trabeation starts which
intertwines the facade to form the base of the tympanum of the
portal. The central part is crowned by the tympanum pierced by an
elaborate rose window. The rich sculptures by the main artists of
the time, including Antonio Tarsia, Giuseppe Torretto, Francesco
Cabianca, Pietro Baratta and Antonio Corradini, further move the
façade. The three acroteric statues of the tympanum, the Faith, the
Hope and the Redeemer in the center are certainly attributed to the
latter author. At the top of the wings are two other statues: the
one on the left is Charity, a sculpture attributed to Paolo Callalo.
Instead the other female figure on the right is currently difficult
to identify, given the loss of arms and attributes; however its
representation with a small cross in a canvas by Canaletto (and in
the subsequent clearer engraving by Visentini) can lead one to
suppose that it is the accessory virtue of Penance, comforted by the
fact that this approach to the three theological virtues is also
reaffirmed in the bas-reliefs on the bases of the high altar of the
same church.
At the center of the facade is the complex
portal formed by an arch surrounded by semi-columns and semi-pillars
which repeat the motif of the wings by grafting directly onto the
plinth and the steps. The complex is crowned by a pediment with a
broken tympanum surmounted, in the center, by a lively marble group
of the glory of angels supporting a scroll depicting the miracle of
the conversion of Eustachio (probably by Torretto) and, on the
sides, by the calm allegorical figures of Patience and Meekness. A
bold putto with a scroll emerges from the keystone of the arch,
probably the work of Giuseppe or Paolo Groppelli.
On the
sides of the façade, two niches with the statues of Sant'Osvaldo
(del Torretto) and San Sebastiano (del Baratta) surmounted, beyond
the entablature, by two bas-reliefs with the stories of the
martyrdom of Eustachio: Eustachio and his family spared from the
fairs and the Martyrdom of Eustachius and his family in a red-hot
bronze bull.
The interior design, whose construction began in 1678, is the work of
the architect Giovanni Grassi. The structure has a single nave with a
vaulted ceiling and, marked by semi-columns of composite order, three
chapels on each side and a large presbytery. The structures of the
altars of the chapels are all set to a certain severity: two simple
straight columns surmounted by a tympanum with two angels squatting on
the sides and a putto in the centre, in almost monochrome marble.
In the center of the floor of the nave lies the large and simple
tombstone of Alvise II Mocenigo. The Doge willed to be buried there in a
Capuchin dress. In the aforementioned will, in fact, the Doge ordered
that the burial "be noble, and this more for the decoration of the floor
of said church than for the pomp of our name and person" and dictated
the anonymous inscription on the stone: Nomen et cineres una cum
vanitate buried. The Mocenigo emblem is not present either: the San Stae
branch of the family died out with Alvise II. The only ornament are the
marble memento mori placed on the frame, unfortunately many damaged: two
large dancing skeletons with scythes at their sides, and, still resting
on a pair of tibias, in the upper band a torch, the dogal horn and the
sealed fold of the testament, and in the lower band an owl, a skull
wearing a camauro and an hourglass.
The four marble statues in
the niches on either side of the presbytery and, on the counter-façade,
on either side of the organ, were of uncertain or debated attribution
for a long time, but from the archives of the building it has been
possible to reconstruct both the author and the exact subject. The
works, the result of the donation of an anonymous devotee, paid for and
probably also finished in 1720, were created by some of the same
sculptors of the team who created the external façade. To the left of
the presbytery, we have San Gregorio Papa by Giuseppe Torretti and to
the right San Girolamo by Antonio Tarsia. On the counter-façade we have
Sant'Agostino di Baratta and Sant'Ambrogio by Antonio Corradini.
Right chapels
first chapel: altarpiece of the Madonna and the saints
Lorenzo Giustiniani, Francesco d'Assisi and Antonio da Padova by Niccolò
Bambini (c. 1710);
second chapel: altarpiece of the Miraculous
Conversion of Saint Eustace by Giuseppe Camerata (after 1710), one of
the very few surviving works by the author;
third chapel (from 1711
altar of the Tiraoro and Battioro School): Sant'Osvaldo in glory by
Antonio Balestra (c. 1710).
The monumental altar develops around the large tabernacle in the
shape of a small temple inserted in a dark marble niche surrounded by a
smaller order of columns and surmounted by an arched tympanum. Around
this is the structure of the major order with paired columns closed by
the tympanum. Above the tympanum, little angels with thuribles and
kneeling angels look at the central group of cherubs who are holding up
a large golden chalice of the sacrament. The scenographic effect is
completed by the fresco in the rear lunette: bright yellow clouds emerge
from behind the rays of the host in contrast with the grisaille teeming
with cherubs. On the frontal bas-relief a deposed Christ and angels by
Torretto (1715). On the bases of the four external columns again the
theological Virtues plus an accessory one, clearly recognizable by the
canonical attributes, all sculpted in relief just mentioned (1706). The
two on the left, Faith with her large cross and Hope with her lifeline,
are the rather modest work of the unknown stonemason Zuanne Zordoni. The
more refined ones on the right are the work of Antonio Tarsia: Charity,
which welcomes and protects the children, and Penance, which wears a
crown of thorns and carries a thorny twig and a small cross.
The
side walls of the presbytery host a conspicuous cycle of paintings
dedicated to the twelve apostles created thanks to the bequest of the
patrician Andrea Stazio (who was one of the delegates for the
reconstruction of the church for 35 years). Originally the canvases were
placed at the base of the twelve side columns of the church. A few
decades later they were placed in their current location with the
addition of two later inserts with a Eucharistic theme, commissioned by
the Scuola del Santissimo. The paintings, framed and connected to each
other by stucco decorations with cherubs and floral scrolls, are all by
different authors and constitute an important compendium of early
eighteenth-century Venetian painting.
On the right wall: above,
St Philip being beaten by a soldier by Pietro Uberti (1722-23),
Communion of St James [the Minor] by Niccolò Bambini (1722-23),
Martyrdom of St Thomas by Giambattista Pittoni (1722-23 ); in the
centre, Fall of the manna by Giuseppe Angeli (after 1770); below, Saint
James Led to Martyrdom by Giambattista Piazzetta (1717), Saint Paul Led
to Heaven by Gregorio Lazzarini (1722-23), Crucifixion of Saint Andrew
by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1722-23).
On the left wall: above,
San Matteo Evangelista by Silvestro Manaigo (1720 ca.), San Simone by
Giambattista Mariotti (1725), San Giuda Taddeo by Angelo Trevisani (1721
ca.); in the centre, Sacrifice of Melchizedek by Giuseppe Angeli (after
1770); below, Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew by Giambattista Tiepolo
(1722-23), Saint Peter released from prison by Sebastiano Ricci
(1717-24), Martyrdom of Saint John the Evangelist by Antonio Balestra
(c. 1724).
On the ceiling, the large oval on canvas of Le Virtù and
two brothers from the Scuola del Santissimo Sacramento by Bartolomeo
Litterini (1708) previously attributed to Sebastiano Ricci.
first chapel (Cappella Foscarini): it is the only one in this church
used for the celebration of a patrician family, the Foscarinis: on the
altar the Crucifix, sculpture by Giuseppe Torretti (c. 1710); on the
side walls the commemorative busts of Sebastiano Foscarini by Torretto,
Antonio Foscarini by Antonio Tarsia, Ludovico Foscarini by Pietro
Baratta and Girolamo Foscarini by Paolo Groppelli;
second chapel:
altarpiece of the Assumption by Francesco Migliori (after 1722), the
only altar among the chapels with a bas-relief frontal with a curious
scene of musician and dancing angels and putti and the central scroll
with the inscription "Assumpta est Maria in Coelum" ;
third chapel on
the left: altarpiece of Saints Catherine and Andrea by Jacopo Amigoni
(1719).
Sacristy
It is accessed from the door to the left of
the presbytery. On the right, on the back wall, is the
seventeenth-century painting Dead Christ by Pietro Della Vecchia.
Proceeding counterclockwise is the anonymous tondo Miracle of the Born
Blind, followed by the two large canvases Trajan Orders Eustace to
Sacrifice to the Idols by Giambattista Pittoni (after 1753) and Trajan
Orders Eustace to Fight of the Tiepole school attributable to Giustino
Menescardi ( after 1753). On the altar is the seventeenth-century
altarpiece of the Crucifixion and the Pie Donne by Maffeo Verona and on
the left wall Sant'Eustachio in prison by Bartolomeo Litterini followed
by another tondo, in pendant with the one opposite, a Preaching of
Christ. On the ceiling a Resurrection of the German school of the
seventeenth century. Immediately under the ceiling runs a long painted
frieze arranged to house the portraits of the parish priests, which
however remained unused after the first ones.
Organ
On the
counter-façade is the large pipe organ by Gaetano Callido (1772, opus
75, 1 keyboard, pedalboard, 15 registers), replacing an earlier
instrument. The large choir loft and chest are richly decorated with
festoons, plant motifs, cherubs and musician angels, decorations made
between 1718 and 1720 by a certain Mistro Cassan, which were not altered
by the installation of the aforementioned organ.