The church of the Ospedaletto, or Santa Maria dei Derelitti, is a religious building in the city of Venice, located in the Castello district.
The church was built in 1575 in the area originally known as "the
target", which housed the hospital built by San Gerolamo Miani in 1528
and housed the sick, pilgrims and orphans of both sexes.
It
overlooks Barbaria delle Tole, a calle that took its name from the fact
that a large part of the timber landed here, tole (tables) in the
Venetian language. As for the term "barbarìa", numerous hypotheses have
been put forward, such as: the common opinion of a certain roughness
(barbarism) of the timber workers in that locality, the work of cleaning
the timber from the "beards", the strong presence of shops of barbers in
the area, the possible connection of the timber trade with towns on the
Berber coast.
This building now belongs to the IRE, Institutions
of Hospitalization and Education, and is part of the heritage of the
rest home of Santi Giovanni e Paolo.
The original design is by
Palladio, while the 1670 façade is the work of Baldassare Longhena,
carried out thanks to the legacy of Bartolomeo Cargnoni.
On 4 May
2010, a fire broke out in front of the church which, spreading inside,
destroyed a painting from the second half of the 17th century by Antonio
Molinari.
The facade is structured on two orders: in the first is the door, surmounted by a fifteenth-century ceramic depicting the Sorrowful Madonna and two windows flanking the door, surrounded by four pillars that stand on four bases. The second order houses the bust of Cargnoni, who is also remembered through his coats of arms on the upper entablature. The building houses above the crowning four allegorical statues of the school of sculptor Giusto Le Court.
The interior of the building has a single nave; the ceiling is the
work of Giuseppe Cherubini, it is from 1905 and has three decorative
panels, of which the central one represents the history of the church
itself. Six altars can be distinguished, three on each side, alternating
with Ionic semi-columns, and a high altar at the back. It consists of a
ciborium designed by Baldassare Longhena in 1668, flanked by two adoring
angels sculpted by Tommaso Ruer. The ciborium partially hides the
sixteenth-century altarpiece depicting the Coronation of the Virgin, a
sixteenth-century masterpiece by Tiziano's pupil Damiano Mazza, who died
prematurely. On the sides are the statues of S. Francesco and S.
Sebastiano, and the paintings by Antonio Molinari.
The
altarpieces on the right side represent: Christ deposed and saints by
the German painter Carl Loth; a Madonna and Child with Saints Joseph,
Charles Borromeo, Simon the Elder and Veronica, by Francesco Ruschi; the
Annunciation to Mary signed by Jacopo Palma il Giovane, and finally The
swimming pool by Gregorio Lazzarini. On the left side are the Madonna
delle Grazie and San Girolamo and Antonio da Padova by Andrea Celesti,
XVII century, at the bottom of the wall, while Giuseppe Angeli
represents the founder of the Ospedaletto in the altarpiece with Christ
on the cross and San Girolamo Miani with some orphans , and finally by
Ermanno Stroiffi, the Blessed Virgin in Glory and Saints Jacopo, Francis
of Assisi and John the Baptist.
Also interesting are the long,
narrow canvases placed on the side walls between the six arches of the
altars and the entablature. In them, the elongated figures of the saints
were executed by various painters, including Giambattista Pittoni and
Pietro Vecchia. Among these, some of the first known works by
Giambattista Tiepolo stand out: on the 4th arch on the right, the
Sacrifice of Isaac, on the 3rd arch on the left, St. Andrew and St.
James the Greater, and on the 1st, St. John and St. Thomas.
The church has a great musical tradition, thanks to the orphans'
choirs and the presence of a historic organ, the work of Pietro Nachini,
from 1751, inserted in a carved and gilded wooden case based on a design
by Longhena, present in the vast choir loft, placed above the high
altar.
The courtyard is a true work of art by Longhena and is
embellished by a well curb and an eighteenth-century loggia; the statues
of the Four Seasons, by Longhena, give the courtyard its name.
Also noteworthy are the oval staircase, in Palladian style, also by
Longhena, and the Music Room, built where the kitchens of the hospital
of San Gerolamo Miani used to be. The hall was frescoed in the 18th
century by Jacopo Guarana and Agostino Mengozzi Colonna 1777, pupils of
Tiepolo.