The church of San Vidal is a religious building in the city of Venice, located in the San Marco district, not far from the Accademia bridge. The church is part of the Chorus Venezia association.
The church of San Vidal was founded in 1084 during the dogeship of
Vitale Falier. The building was restructured towards the end of the 12th
century. A further reconstruction of the church took place at the end of
the 17th century with the intention of transforming the façade into a
grandiose monument to Francesco Morosini, doge from 1688 to 1694. The
project was entrusted to Antonio Gaspari who presented a series of
projects freely inspired by that of the Roman church of Sant'Andrea al
Quirinale. In the end, Morosini's heirs abandoned the project and,
following a change of patrons, the new church was built by Andrea
Tirali.
The church, closed for worship, was for many years the
seat of the Catholic Union of Italian Artists and its sacristy used as
an exhibition space for works of modern and contemporary art. It was
later used as a space for classical and baroque music concerts.
External
The building is located next to the Rio di San Vidal
and the main elevation overlooks the Campo of the same name. It
presents itself with classical forms according to a Palladian scheme
and houses on two side urns the sculpted portraits of Doge Carlo
Contarini and his wife Paolina Loredan, in memory of the bequest
with which the construction was financed. With its tripartite layout
with salient features, it masks the single nave of the church, since
what appears to be lateral naves actually houses houses, whose rents
provided the parish priests with the money necessary for the
erection of the current building.
Internal
The interior,
with a vaulted ceiling, has a single nave structure, with three
secondary altars on each side. The first altar on the left is
decorated with the painting The Virgin Concetta by Sebastiano Ricci.
In the second altar on the left is the altarpiece Christ crucified
and the apostles by Giulia Lama, flanked by two eighteenth-century
sculptures, The patriarch Simeon and Saint Joseph, attributable to
Antonio Tarsia, while the upper lunette is decorated with the
Ascension by Antonio Vassilacchi . The third altar on the left
houses a painting from the school of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta,
San Sebastiano and San Rocco, by Angelo Trevisan.
The main
altar is located in an isolated position in the center of the
presbytery and is flanked by two statues by Antonio Gai depicting La
Fortezza and La Fede. In the background of the presbytery is the
large San Vitale altarpiece on horseback and Saints, also known as
the Glory of San Vitale or San Vitale Altarpiece, created by Vittore
Carpaccio in 1514.
On the right side, the first altar houses
works by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (St. Joseph, St. Francis of
Paola and the Savior in Glory). The second altar is decorated with
sculptures signed by Antonio Tarsia, The Annunciation of the Virgin,
San Domenico and Santa Rosa; completes the ornament The Assumption
by Antonio Vassilacchi, placed in the upper lunette. In the third
altar there is an altarpiece from 1730 created by Giovanni Battista
Piazzetta and depicting the Angel Raphael, Saint Louis and Saint
Anthony of Padua.
Other works can be found in the sacristy:
The death of Sant'Ursicino by Gregorio Lazzarini and The martyrdom
of San Vitale, an eighteenth-century painting from the Venetian
school.
Tradition has it that the famous Venetian musician
Baldassare Galuppi was buried in the church of San Vidal, but there
is no commemorative plaque to testify to this.
The bell
tower, incorporated in the factory, on the side facing the Accademia
bridge has a white stone plaque embedded in the base with an
inscription from the Roman era, placed in this position since the
sixteenth century.