The church of the Terese or church of Santa Teresa is a church in the city of Venice, located in the Dorsoduro district, near the church of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli, of which it is a subsidiary.
The church was built at the end of the 17th century to a design by
Andrea Cominelli and consecrated in 1688.
Initially it also
housed the Terese convent, suppressed in 1810 to make way for an
orphanage. In the 20th century the convent was then used as a dormitory
for the homeless, while today it houses the educational activities of
some IUAV degree courses.
Outside, the building has an almost completely unadorned facade, with
a central portal and two side doors surmounted by simple architraves,
without any other important architectural element.
The interior
has a perfectly square plan and is full of paintings and decorations in
the Baroque style. To the right of the entrance there is a large
presbytery and all around the nave there are several altars, all hosting
a painting and separated by pilasters ending in Corinthian capitals. In
the first altar on the right side there is the canvas of Sant'Orsola,
the Magdalene and Angels, the work of the Roman Francesco Ruschi. The
altar to the right of the presbytery houses a painting by Fra Massimo da
Verona depicting the Archangel Michael and the saints Francesco di
Paola, Andrea Corsini and Alberto. In the presbytery, above the high
altar, there are two works by the Flemish painter Nicolò Renieri, Santa
Teresa in Glory and Portrait of Senator Giovanni Moro. The first altar
on the left of the presbytery was damaged during the Second World War by
a shrapnel from a bomb and the painting it houses, Christ on the Cross
and the Magdalene by Giovan Battista Langetti, was transferred to the
Ca' Rezzonico Museum of the eighteenth-century Venice, after having been
restored in 1949. To the left of the eighteenth-century organ is a
Madonna del Carmelo and Saints created by Jacopo Guarana.
The
main altar, dating back to the eighteenth century, is characterized by
rich marble decorations in the Baroque style and is delimited by a large
structure with round arches.
The ceiling is flat, except at the
high altar, and houses another painting of Santa Teresa in glory, also
attributed to Nicolò Renieri.
In the sacristy there is an
anonymous Madonna with putto and saints from the 16th century, a wooden
crucifix presumably dating back to the 17th century and a marble
high-relief with the sixteen Jesuit martyrs from the same period.
To complete the complex, on the left side of the church, there are
the buildings of the former convent, which enclose an internal cloister
bordered by loggias and porticoes with large arches.