The church of Santa Giustina is the remains of a religious building in Venice deconsecrated in 1810, located in the homonymous field, in the Castello district.
The structure is part of the series of convents built on the
outskirts of the city. Legend traces its foundation back to Saint Magnus
in the 7th century, after the Paduan martyr saint appeared to him in a
dream. It is probable that it was already a parish in the 11th century
and appears as a collegiate church dependent on the basilica of San
Pietro di Castello in 1219, the year of its consecration. At that time
it was governed by regular canons, whose order of belonging has been
lost, then, for a short time, it passed to the canons of the Salvatore
di Santa Brigida and, in 1448, was definitively entrusted to the
Augustinians from Santa Maria degli angeli of Murano with an apostolic
bull which obliged them to maintain two priests. Following the
Napoleonic edicts, the parish was suppressed and associated with Santa
Ternita in 1807 and in 1810 the religious order was also suppressed.
The only restructuring of which there is documentary evidence and of
interest, before the deconsecration, is the reconstruction of the facade
in 1640 by Longhena and at the expense of the Soranzo family.
In
1844 the building was transformed into a military school, dividing it
into three floors and demolishing the pediment, and in 1924 it became
the headquarters of the Giovanni Battista Benedetti Scientific High
School.
According to the chronicles it contained a rich
collection of paintings now dispersed: Zanetti documents works by Sante
Peranda, Palma il Giovane, Marco Vecellio, Pietro Liberi, Giovanni
Contarini, Antonio Vassilacchi l'Aliense, Alessandro Varotari il
Padovanino, Matteo Ponzone, Francesco Ruschi , Pietro Della Vecchia,
Baldassarre D'Anna, Filippo Zaniberti.
The church was of
considerable importance for Venice, every year on 7 October, the
anniversary of Santa Giustina and the victory of Lepanto, the Doge went
on an official visit. For the occasion, coins were repeatedly minted
with the effigy of the saint and then called "Giustina".
Of the original building, only the opulent facade in Istrian stone
remains, but the crowning is missing, and two Gothic windows with
delicate fretwork walled inside.
The commission given to Longhena
envisaged the objective, completely secular and common in various
Venetian Baroque churches, to glorify the Soranzo family.
The
facade is tripartite by tall Corinthian semi-columns of the major order
set on conspicuous historiated bases which currently support a simple
attic with acroteric spheres. In the original building of Longhena there
was a large arched tympanum surmounted by sculptures and decorated with
the Soranzo emblem, as represented both in the engraving by Domenico
Lovisa and in the slightly earlier one by Carlevarijs. The sculptures
represented a Redeemer flanked by two allegories seated on the sides on
the tympanum and, after the lateral volutes, two figures of saints above
the corners.
The Ionic semi-pillars of the minor order support a
rhythmic beam that divides the remaining facade in two. Below it are the
two squared side windows and the rich central round arched portal,
supported by short Tuscan columns and decorated with winged cherubs on
the spandrels and keystone. Supported by the beams are the structures of
the three Soranzo cenotaphs. The two lateral ones, leaning against blind
windows and surmounted by broken curvilinear tympanums, consist of a
sturdy base which supports an urn decorated with pods and plant motifs
and a large central volute. The dedications to the evoked characters,
Gerolamo and Francesco Soranzo, are engraved on the bases, of which
above the urns, until the early 1900s, there were the sculptures of the
busts. The central monument, dedicated to Giovanni Soranzo, is slightly
larger and of the greater original complexity remain the two volutes at
the foot of the base, a greater refinement on the pedestal of the urn
and the oculi at the top in the background: once this too was decorated
by the bust above the urn but also surrounded by two female figures,
allegories of Peace and War, seated on the sides of the base and the
urn. The busts are currently dispersed while the great allegories of
Peace and War are kept in a deposit of the superintendency. All the
sculptures on the facade had been performed by the same sculptor, a
rather rare thing at that time, the Bolognese Clemente Molli.