The church of San Lorenzo is a religious building in the city of Venice, in the Castello district, together with the chapel of San Sebastiano, it was part of the female Benedictine monastery of the same name. Today it overlooks the field that bears the same name, not far from the church of San Zaccaria.
Old Venetian historians and scholars refer to the legendary
foundation of the church on the two islets then called Twins, indicating
that it was begun in 809 at the behest of Doge Agnello Partecipazio.
They also say that in 853 the will of the bishop of Olivolo Orso
Partecipazio destined all these properties, which had come by
succession, as an inheritance to the monastery. Only Corner underlines
that it is an uncertain tradition, but for some reason he identifies –
without further explanations, but through passive acceptance of another
recurring legend – the Badoer family with that of the Partecipazi. In
reality, modern historiography has long agreed to deny, due to the lack
of documentation, not only the succession of the Badoers to the
Partecipazi, but also the close kinship ties between Bishop Orso and the
doges, and also of the various Partecipazi doges among themselves.
However, the circumstances and the date 809 lend themselves to some
reservations as the founder Agnello Partecipazio was elected doge a
little later, between the end of 810 and the beginning of 811. In
reality, the archaeological investigations carried out on the site set
back the date of the presence of a church, at least at the end of the
7th century.
However, the indications contained in the bequest
from the Olivolense bishop remain valid, whose will of 13 February 854
(853 Venetian blackberries) is still preserved. In this document Orso
declared full ownership of the church, relics, land and other buildings
included in the Twin Islands, as inherited from his father, and left
them to his sister Romana with the recommendation to build a monastery
there.
The legacy also included the church of San Severo, built
in 821 and became a parish church in 847, located on the other
westernmost of the two Twin Islands. This church always remained under
the complete patronage of the nuns. Among other privileges and duties,
in fact, the monastery of San Lorenzo maintained for centuries the
authority to appoint its parish priest - unlike the other Venetian
parishes where it was customary to popularly elect the parish priest -
and it also provided for the appointment and salary of four chaplains. A
patronage that caused repeated quarrels between the parishioners and the
monastery, resolved by the ecclesiastical justice always in favor of the
ancient rights of the latter. In addition to the churches already
present, in 1007 the chapel of San Sebastiano was added to San Lorenzo,
built by the future doge Ottone Orseolo as thanksgiving for the end of
the plague.
It can also be assumed that the installation of the
nuns preceded the sale of the properties by a few years, in fact both
Coronelli, Sansovino and Martinelli cited the date as 841, and the
latter also specified that Pope Leo IV issued the bull confirming the
rule Benedictine for this convent.
We have no news of what the
first church of San Lorenzo was like with the chapel of San Sebastiano,
of San Severo we only know that it had already been rebuilt in 1053.
However, all of them were lost in the disastrous fire of 1105. The fire,
which started in a house of the The island of San Severo first extended
to San Lorenzo, spread towards Santa Maria Formosa, San Geminiano and
San Moisé and then, driven by the wind, it crossed the Grand Canal at
San Gregorio and left a long trail of destruction in Venice reaching
even San Nicolò dei Mendicoli. The reconstructions were followed by
other renovations until the beginning of the 16th century. In 1592 the
rebuilding of the church of San Lorenzo began, based on a project by
Simone Sorella, substantially completed in 1602, with the exclusion of
the facade which was never built, and was reconsecrated in 1617. The
chapel of San Sebastiano was also rebuilt between 1629 and 1632 and
other interventions followed in 1748.
Romana Partecipazio became the first abbess of the cloistered complex
succeeded by her cousin Ancilla followed throughout the history of the
monastery by other noblewomen. A particularity of this Laurentian
congregation was in fact its exclusive character: the nuns all came from
Venetian patrician families. These aristocratic origins of the nuns led
the monastery to increasingly increase its assets, effectively becoming
the richest in Venice. In addition to the Twin Islands with their
buildings, they still owned a couple of hundred houses scattered around
the city to which were added several other possessions in the mainland
of the dogado and dominions.
As a reminder of their aristocratic
rank, the nuns kept their surname and also called themselves and signed
themselves as Domina or Nobil Donna. After the release provision of
Clement IV in 1267, they also maintained the custom of autonomously
electing their abbess by certifying her with a notarial registration.
The office was first for life then, from the beginning of the
seventeenth century, it became triennial but with the possibility of
repeating the office.
The cenoby's sense of power, manifested
several times against the parish of San Severo, placed it in the
position of being able to override the local ecclesiastical power to
address the pope directly and finally obtain satisfaction. It was the
case of the dispute with the bishops of Castello Bartolomeo II Querini
in 1299 and his later successor Giacomo Alberti in 1317: both had
imposed taxes on various religious houses and the first had also
excommunicated the Benedictine nuns of San Lorenzo for disobedience. But
to the detriment of the bishops it was remembered that in 1221 they had
also been exempted from any burden with the bull of Pope Honorius III
Starting from Boniface VIII, at the turn of the XIII and XIV
centuries, numerous indulgences linked to the church were granted,
subsequently reaffirmed by many other popes.
As aristocrats they
were, however, they lived with a comfort that they exhibited in the care
of clothing and with real worldly magnificence in the annual
celebrations and in the rich dressing ceremonies of the new nuns.
Gabriel Bella has handed down in his painting Vestiario di una Nobil
Dama Veneta in San Lorenzo (about 1794/1799) the scene of the
consecration of a professed woman. The church had been lavishly decked
out and temporarily fitted out with three-story choir lofts on either
side, well supported by stout corbels. From their long galleries echoed
the sound of a double orchestra of strings and winds and a double men's
choir. Below were the two rows of rich armchairs where the festively
dressed nuns sat. Behind them, between the modillions, like boxes, was
an elegant audience, while the center of the hall was a swarm of
noblemen, mostly in official black dress with long white wigs and large
cloaks. On the steps of the altar, in front of three priests in solemn
golden vestments, the abbess and prioress imposed the veil on the newly
professed, almost as if they were crowning her. The large organs behind
the choirs were probably the result of the painter's imagination. But
apart from this and the numerous color details, the elegant ceremonial
attire of the nuns should be noted: on their heads they wear a cap in
the form of a diadem from which a transparent veil descended to cover
their faces up to above their mouths; the black dress was slightly
low-cut, with short sleeves to the forearm, and bordered everywhere by
white lace.
An acid and moralizing description of this attire and
of the customs of the nuns comes to us from the account of the companion
of the future grand duke of Tuscany Cosimo III, the "royal chaplain"
Filippo Pizzichi (released in print only in 1824). During an official
trip to northern Italy in 1664, the young prince arrived in Venice and
asked to attend a mass in San Lorenzo. The nuns agreed and:
«hungry
for such an honor, they prepared one of the richest and most superb
planets. ever seen, laden with gold and pearls, leaving no way for the
priest to be able to make genuflections.
[… Then the prince
entertained] in the parlor at the very wide grates with the Abbess, and
with two Loredan sisters, noble Venetians, one of whom, in addition to
being beautiful, was greatly admired for her grace and eloquence.
This is the richest monastery in Venice, and there are over 100
mothers, all gentlewomen. They dress very gracefully. With a white dress
like in the French style, the bust of pleated byssus, and the professed
black lace three inches wide on its seams; a small veil surrounds their
forehead, under which their curled and neatly arranged hats emerge; half
uncovered breasts, and all together I dress more like nymphs than nuns.
Pizzichi in his flattery towards the prince was unable to consider
the high noble rank of the two Loredans, descendants of doges, and of
the abbess Polissena Badoer, of a family that considered itself
descendants of the Partecipazio doges. A fact that led them to consider
such a visit not at all exceptional and rather almost a duty.
Furthermore, the chaplain in his prurient acrimony not only exaggerated
the depth of the unusual neckline but also felt the need to emphasize
the width of the grilles of the parlor.
If the party dress left
the right-thinking dumbfounded, the ordinary outfit of the nuns was
still careful to maintain an aristocratic elegance. The Franciscan
encyclopedist Vincenzo Coronelli describes it thus:
«The ordinary
dress of them is of black Saja, not in the form of a tunic; but adapted
to the life of each one, they use a white veil on the head, which does
not cover the culture of the hair at all, and stretched out from the
head it wraps around the neck. However, when they recite the Divine
Office in choir, or approach the Altar to communicate, they wear a cowl
with wide sleeves, and with a train lying on the ground, which
reconciles them with majestic decorum and devotion. To the head they add
a transparent black veil, which hangs free beyond the belt»
We
have no idea how many nuns lived in the vast complex in the early
centuries: there is no data before the end of the 14th century. In that
period they varied from 24 to 30, then in the 16th and 17th centuries
they reached their maximum number: 57 professed in 1521 and 67 in 1636.
During the 18th century the number of nuns decreased from about 30 at
the beginning to 15 towards the end. At the time of its suppression in
1810 there were 11 nuns and 17 lay sisters
Certainly the almost morbid attention of the Tuscan chaplain, and the
repeated quotations of the last part of his passage, remind us of the
problem of the "scandalous conduct" common to many of the Venetian
monasteries and which, for a certain period, seems to have concerned
particularly that of San Lorenzo. This behavior was encouraged above all
by the assiduous attendance of the parlors by libertine characters,
popularly defined as Moneghini, who encouraged the nuns to leave the
cloister, even in secular clothes, to go to parties and dances,
especially during the carnival.
The moneghini did not fail to
sneak into the monastery for amorous meetings, often favored by the
external workers for the cloistered complex. Some of these fornicators
active in San Lorenzo were sentenced to several years in prison plus
substantial fines. Together with these, the women who had helped them
also suffered sentences of flogging as well as being banned from the
monastery. The first news of convictions date back to the second half of
the fourteenth century. These sentences were in compliance with the
"side taken" by the Major Council in 1349, but in 1485 the senate
decided to amend the law by providing for «augumentar the statutory
penalties by ensuring that at least the terror of those faction is
respectful». Furthermore, already in 1385, it had also been established
that the preachers and confessors admitted to the monasteries, including
any companions, had to be over 60 years old.
Despite these
provisions, in 1509 the patriarch Antonio Contarini still had to
recommend to all the abbesses of the city to prevent these outings and
to interrupt visits to the parlors at a reasonable hour. A similar
ordinance had to be reaffirmed by the newly appointed patriarch Lorenzo
Priuli in 1591. Inspired by these same principles were the rules
introduced by patriarch Giovanni Tiepolo in 1626 to ensure that the nuns
should only be absorbed in religious practices by imposing the biennial
election of procurators for the "earthly" affairs of the monasteries.
There must have been three to five, as needed. However, it was placed as
a precautionary limit that they were only people of at least fifty years
of age and in close kinship with the nuns (ie fathers, brothers or
uncles), and in the event of their death the office had to be
immediately revoked. Not only that, the abbesses had to present a
shortlist of candidates to the patriarch before the election was held so
that he could assess their reliability in advance.
However, we
must not fall into the temptation to consider these events of
irregularity in an easy mouthful perspective: life in the monastery was
an authentic drama for many involuntary virgins. It must be taken into
account that it was customary in aristocratic families to "dispose of
the surpluses" of the offspring by relegating the daughters to
cloistered complexes. The aim was to keep the assets compact, and
consequently the authoritative position of the family, without
dispersing it in the rich marriage dowries expected at the time. A dowry
was also provided for nuns to nun the daughters, but of a decidedly
lower amount. It should be noted that the same treatment was also
provided for cadet sons, with the alternative of a military career. It
was a matter of real forcing sustained and hidden by the families and
the clergy close to them: the church officially did not admit that the
girls were forced to become nuns in the absence of a true vocation, and
when the ecclesiastical authorities had come to know, they would have
had to provide upon dissolution of votes.
A case that caused an
uproar at the time, and is still of interest in literature, is that of
Maria da Riva, imprisoned in the aristocratic monastery of San Lorenzo
when she was ten years old. She took her vows reluctantly, and had made
it known to a priest friend of the family, who, however, kept it hidden.
After a few years during a dressing ceremony she met the French
ambassador Charles François de Froulay and, despite the malicious gossip
for repeated meetings with a foreign diplomat, she became in love with
her and became pregnant with her. De Frouleay managed to convince the
abbess to leave her isolated in her cell, and to have her approached
only by people she trusted. Among these was a midwife who helped the
woman to give birth, and then she hid her baby. There was the risk of a
diplomatic incident between Venice and France, but also between Venice
and the Church. Eventually the autonomous failed attempts of the nun and
the ambassador for a transfer to another location were resolved at the
request of the abbess, and Maria was sent as a schoolgirl to Ferrara.
Finally, de Froulay was recalled to his homeland. Released from her vows
by Pope Benedict XIV, Maria chose to marry Colonel Moroni, but she was
imprisoned in another monastery on charges of bigamy. However, she
managed to get permission to go out to reunite with her husband. She was
only formally wanted by the authorities, she managed to lose track of
her.
The church and chapel housed, and as usual they boasted of it,
several burials and relics of saints and blesseds. Some were considered
such only in traditions such as the mysterious martyrs Barbaro and
Ligorio. The provenances were also legendary: in addition to some finds
of the titular saint, some bodies and relics arrived such as the remains
of Saint Paul, patriarch of Constantinople, which it was said came from
the emperor Alexius I Comnenus, perhaps as part of a donation in
thanksgiving to the Venetian aid against the Normans, or a foot of Saint
Barbara donated by Manuel I Comnenus; others transported to Venice and
donated to the monastery by exponents of the patriciate such as Saint
Candida martyr of Bolsena. Other bodies were, instead, more recent,
local figures of Venetian devotion such as the blessed Giovanni Olini
parish priest of San Zan Degolà and the bishop Leone Bembo. It was said
of the latter that, having returned from Syria unrecognizable due to the
tortures to end his days as an unknown, working as a gardener at this
monastery. Tradition and the chronicles have also cloaked in a
miraculous aura the recoveries or discoveries as well as the
identifications of the various remains, both the oldest ones and those
dating back to the sixteenth/seventeenth century reconstruction.
At the time of the Napoleonic suppressions, most of the relics still
present in the two convent churches were purchased by Gaetano Gresler, a
Veronese painter and collector, and resold to the church of San Biagio
in Dignano.
Clement IV in 1267 also granted the monastery the
right to offer a burial in its properties to anyone who requested it.
There were no monumental structures of other churches, but the news of
some has been handed down. It is known that Marco Polo left in his will
the indication that he was buried in San Lorenzo, where his father
Nicolò also rested. In 1908 and 1923 attempts were made to find his
remains without success, in reality the search was limited to the area
of the old alleyway, while it appears that the tomb was at the foot of
the main altar of the now disappeared chapel of San Sebastiano.
The composers Gioseffo Zarlino and Matteo d'Asola, both chaplains of San
Severo, were also buried in San Lorenzo. Even the master of the ducal
chapel Francesco Cavalli was buried here, in the tomb of the bishop of
Pula Claudio Sozomeno, his wife's uncle.
After the fall of the Republic on 28 July 1806, with the second
French occupation, the restrictive measures for regular orders were
first extended to Venice. The monastery of San Lorenzo was considered
second class and it was ordered that the Benedictine nuns of Sant'Anna
di Castello and those of Santa Maria dell'Umiltà should also be housed
there. A few years later, on 25 April 1810, the suppression of all
religious orders was decreed: the nuns had to leave and the cenoby with
everything it contained passed into the hands of the state and was
closed.
The churches were stripped of the furnishings which were
put up for sale and dispersed, although the state property still
complained in 1812 of the lack of offers for the paintings as they were
too large. We only know that two of the side altars were sold to a
church in Anguillara and four to that of San Biagio di Lendinara, the
main altar remaining in its place.
With the decree banning
begging in the Adriatic department (October 21, 1811, active from
January 2, 1812) the House of Industry was established in the
ex-monastery of San Lorenzo to collect all beggars capable of work. This
new institution gave a bowl of soup and some bread to all the poor who
went there, as well as compensation for any small jobs assigned, and
could also provide a place to sleep. The House depended on the
Congregation of charity until 1816, then it passed under the direct
control of the new Austrian government, which also established a center
for forced labor. In 1821 it passed under the municipal administration,
which in 1853 carried out a restoration. After the transformation into a
mendical shelter in 1875, the management was assigned to the
Administration of the Pii Istituti Riuniti in 1877, which managed the
site until 1941. Only after the Second World War did the municipality
decide to change the destination first, in 1946, to the Infirmary for
the chronically ill, and in 1951 in the Municipal Geriatric Center. It
is currently a hospitalization center for elderly people who are now
deprived of autonomy.
As for the churches, that of San Sebastiano
(together with the wing of the monastery that closed the campo)
disappeared in the renovations for the new function while for that of
San Lorenzo the new Habsburg government allowed it to be reopened in
1817 to serve guests of the House of Industry. The provision took place
following the interest of the chaplain Daniele Canal, who arranged to
re-equip it with altars from San Basso. In 1842 it was entrusted to the
care of the Dominicans for which Meduna built a small convent close to
the southern side of the church, eliminating the seventeenth-century
bell tower. After the unification of Italy with the extension to Venice
of the subversive laws of the ecclesiastical axis, the Dominicans were
expelled in 1868, and the church closed definitively. The municipality
of Venice adapted the church as a warehouse and also ventilated the
gutting of the central part to create a new road system. The
19th-century projects for the construction of social housing in the old
residual gardens only resulted in the construction of a few sheds and
large residential buildings.
In the fifties of the twentieth
century the church was consolidated and equipped as a restoration
laboratory for the superintendence. From the following eighties it was
used occasionally for activities of the Venice Biennale. Among these,
the staging between 25 and 29 September 1984, as part of the Biennale
Musica, of Prometheus is remarkable. Tragedy of listening by Luigi Nono,
based on a text by Massimo Cacciari, with the scenic wooden ark, placed
in the nave to welcome the public and musicians, designed by Renzo
Piano. In 2017, an agreement was signed between the municipality and the
Thyssen-Bornemisza foundation for the restoration of the church in
exchange for an exclusive concession of the space for nine years. Since
March 23, 2019, Ocean Space of the TBA21–Academy has been opened, an
offshoot of the foundation, an interdisciplinary structure between ocean
science and art.
What the very first structures looked like and whether they were
made, at least in part, of wood or brick, we can have no idea. Only a
few fragments of the opus sectile and mosaic floor have been traced. Of
those following the fire of 1105, the map by De Barbari is sufficiently
representative. Although the churches underwent further work after the
12th-century reconstruction, at the date of the making of the map they
still appear essentially Byzantine. The church at that time «not very
large in body» and perhaps with three naves, was structured with a cross
plan. Surmounted by a dome covered by a low-spired roof, it seems to be
preceded towards the campo by a long narthex or a portico. The chapel of
San Sebastiano was flanked by a long portico enlivened in the center by
a structure like a porch to indicate the public entrance. The entrance
on the facade, on the other hand, appears to be reserved for the
monastery and protected by a boundary wall. A small belfry was shared
between the two buildings.
The monastery extended with a wing
opposite the church until it almost closed the courtyard, accessible at
the time only from the short calle into which the three-arched bridge
led. At the end of the calle towards the courtyard, an arch was built to
demarcate the area of strict competence of the cloistered complex. The
same closing structure together with the old bridge is the one visible
to the right of Gentile Bellini's painting Miracle of the Cross fallen
into the canal of San Lorenzo. The wing was demolished by the Meduna in
1840 and the courtyard thus became a field.
The cloister behind
San Sebastiano still appeared trabeated in De Barbari's time. The arches
were placed on the ancient columns and capitals only during the 16th
century and this is how it appears to us today, the only visible relic
preserved of the ancient monastery.
To the south of the church
there was a large vegetable garden, currently completely built up. The
small 19th-century cloister of the Dominicans with its external portico
on the foundations, south of the church, has been set up against some
sheds (originally for craft activities) and further south, various
houses.
The project by Simone Sorella, a staunch supporter of Palladian
classicism, remained unfinished in the façade even though it was
prepared for the adhesion of the marble coverings. One can only assume a
majestic appearance with its rise from the short staircase. Antonio
Visentini, who perhaps knew the original project, has handed down to us
in a drawing a plausible hypothesis of how the facade could have been
completed, even if his intent was not exactly philological. So much so
that the relief of the plan, in the same series, is modified by the
addition of wings connecting the side pillars.
The interior as it
appears to us today is particularly original (indeed emblematic of the
independent Venetian attitude in a period in which the orders of greater
Roman obedience were founding their churches according to the design
methods dictated by the counter-reformation - the Tolentini of the
Theatines and the Humility of the Jesuits), with its large area divided
almost in the center by three large arches to separate the cloistered
space from the public one. The base of the side arches is closed off by
a low wall with doors and windows, used as a parlor, and above an
elaborate grating (once gilded) the separation ends, but still allows a
perception of airiness. Inside the highest central arch stands the great
high altar.
The sections of the ceiling corresponding to the two
partitions of the plan are divided into barrel vaults on the sides,
oriented at right angles to the building, connected by ribs to the cross
vaults of the median band, aligned between the large thermal windows and
the central arch ; each segment with the simple decoration of a discreet
central rosette.
The main altar (from about 1620), the only one
surviving among those of the church, was designed by Girolamo Campagna,
in line with the layout of Sorella, and so must have been the six side
altars. It is presented in the shape of a triumphal arch and structured
with the two facades fully usable both from the choir and from the hall,
in a precious chiaroscuro alternation of the marbles enhanced by the
polychrome shop assistants, especially on the canteen. The even more
colorful small temple tabernacle dominates the central through opening,
culminating in a small bronze pierced dome. Campagna reserved the
execution of the statues of Saints Lawrence and Sebastian in the niches
on the sides. The other sculptures, those of the saints on the second
order above the columns (saints not precisely identifiable although
their outfits - two as bishops and two as Roman soldiers - suggest a
reference to the local relics) and the acroterials (the triumphant
Christ flanked by adoring angels ) are the work of assistants and of the
skilled stonemason Giovanni Battista da Cannaregio. The tabernacle was
accompanied by some bronze statuettes, now on deposit at the Correr
Museum.
We have news of the six side altars thanks to Martinioni,
Boschini and Zanetti who, however, limit themselves to describing the
paintings, Visentini reserves instead a hypothetical relief. The guides
cited tell us that the first painting on the right was a Coronation of
the Virgin with Saints Lawrence and Augustine by Flaminio Floriano, a
pupil of Tintoretto, followed by the Martyrdom of Saint Paul Bishop by
Domenico Tintoretto and the Crucifixion with Saints Andrew and Clare of
Palma the Younger. Continuing counterclockwise on the other side was the
Baptism of Christ by Pietro Mera known as il Fiammingo, another follower
of Tintoretto, continuing was another canvas by Palma, San Barbaro
carried to heaven by angels and on the last altar was a Assumption
venerated by the bishop of Pula Claudio Sozomeno di Sante Peranda.
Beyond the railings, within the cloistered space, the large canvas of
Paradise by Girolamo Pilotti was visible, used as a model for the mosaic
in San Marco, passed in 1885 to the modern procurator of San Marco.
Apart from the latter, all these paintings are now missing. Also
lost are the two rows of nuns' choir stalls: they were finely carved in
walnut and in the center was the even more elaborate gilded throne for
the abbess.
The chapel, also known as a small church or oratory, had the function
of a place of prayer reserved for the nuns, while always maintaining
access for the public. Few iconographic memories remain of the new
seventeenth-century building, in addition to the literary ones.
An engraving by Sebastiano Giampiccoli, in its forcibly enlarged
perspective representation, shows us the bare side towards the campo,
but does not let us know its facade. Instead, this is recorded in a
drawing by Visentini, although acceptable only as a hypothesis: it shows
us an elegant tripartite structure as Francesco Contin, an architect
appreciated by the Venetian religious orders, could have thought of it.
More easily acceptable is the relief of the plan with a single nave.
For the interior we are assisted by the well-known guides, as usual
limited to the paintings. Thus we know that the chapel housed three
altars. On the larger one was a canvas by Palma il Giovane, the
Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. As for the minor altars, the one on the
left carried an altarpiece by the Flemish Michele Desubleo, the
Martyrdom of San Lorenzo, and the one on the right a Madonna with Child
and San Leone Bembo which the oldest guides attribute to an otherwise
unknown Giambattista Mercato (perhaps identifiable with Giovanni
Battista Mercati, of whom, however, there are no known relations with
Venice). On the same altar stood the oldest and only surviving piece
(since 1818 it has been found in Vodnjan in the cathedral of San Biagio
together with the other relics from the monastery), the Chest of Leone
Bembo: the paintings with scenes from the life of the blessed on the two
the sides and on the lid that the old scholars assigned to Carlo
Crivelli appear to modern critics to be more likely the work of Lazzaro
Bastiani, even though some had referred the lid to the school of Paolo
Veneziano. Only Boschini also mentioned a banner with Saints Lawrence
and Sebastian painted by Girolamo Pilotto.