The church of the Santi Apostoli di Cristo, commonly called "dei Santi Apostoli", is a religious building in the city of Venice located in the Cannaregio district. It rises on the field of the same name, at the beginning of the Strada Nova.
The legend, narrated by the historian Flaminio Corner, tells that it
was built by San Magno, bishop of Oderzo, who in ecstasy saw the twelve
apostles who ordered him to build a church dedicated to them in the spot
where he had found twelve cranes.
This was one of the first areas
of Venice to be colonized and it is believed that a church already
existed in the 9th century, but the only certain fact is that in 1021
the church underwent a total reconstruction.
In the fifteenth
century, the architect Mauro Codussi added a portico on the side façade,
the sacristy, and the chapel of the noble Corner family to the
pre-existing structure of the church.
In 1575 the church was
almost completely rebuilt: the load-bearing walls were reused and part
of the fourteenth-century frescoes and the Corner chapel were saved.
Alessandro Vittoria was in charge of the work.
When in 1489
Caterina Corner, Queen of Cyprus, donated her possessions to the
Republic of Venice, she brought with her the body of Saint Amethyst, a
Cypriot saint and had it buried in the church, so dear to her ancestors.
She herself was buried in the Holy Apostles, when she died on July
10, 1510, from stomach doja. However, in 1575, when the church was
rebuilt, her body was also moved to the church of San Salvador, where it
still is, despite her wish to rest in the church of the Holy Apostles.
The interior consists of a nave with a double order of pillars.
Immediately on the right is the altar with the altarpiece Christ
among the Apostles by Sebastiano Santi, circa 1828, followed by the
fifteenth-century Corner chapel, with very fine marbles and decorations
which house the bodies and funeral monuments of Marco and Giorgio
Corner, respectively father and brother of Catherine Corner. The altar
with the Communion of Saint Lucia by Giambattista Tiepolo, circa 1748,
is beautiful.
The second altar on the right side houses the
altarpiece The Birth of the Virgin, from 1599, by Giovanni Contarini.
The main altar with the tabernacle in the shape of a circular temple
was designed by Francesco Lazzari. On the sides of the presbytery stand
the statues of St. Peter and St. Paul, made by an unknown artist in the
manner of Alessandro Vittoria. On the two side walls the Last Supper by
Cesare da Conegliano (1583) and the Fall of the Manna, attributed to
Paolo Veronese and finished after his death by his heirs.
In the
two side chapels, the fourteenth-century frescoes have been saved, even
if in less than perfect conditions. On the wall to the right of the main
chapel is the marble bas-relief of San Sebastiano by Tullio Lombardo.
On the left side altarpieces by Gaspare Diziani and Domenico
Maggiotto. Among them the pulpit and the baptismal font. On the central
compartment of the ceiling the works by Fabio Canal, Communion of the
Apostles and Exaltation of the Eucharist, 18th century.
The bell
tower dates back to 1672 but was finished by Andrea Tirali in the 18th
century, who designed the belfry and the cusp. It is 47 meters high.