The church of Santa Maria delle Penitenti is a religious building in the city of Venice, located in the Cannaregio district and overlooking the Cannaregio canal.
Built in 1706 for the piety of the priest of the Oratory Rinaldo
Bellini, and for the generosity of Marina da Leze, the patriarch
Giovanni Badoaro and the priest Paolo Contarini, to help women who went
astray and then repented.
The institutional purpose of the church
complex and of the Hospice of Santa Maria delle Penitenti connected to
it was to shelter prostitutes who had repented and other women who had
caused public scandal and needed help, employing them in an honest job .
In about 1725, the construction of the pio loco began in its current
form, based on the project that was prepared by Giorgio Massari, who
also directed its construction. The reference model was that of the
Zitelle church on the Giudecca: the church in the center between the two
wings of the hospice, whose buildings extend along the foundations and
inside around the cloisters (only one of which, however, was
accomplished).
The church was opened to the public in 1744 even
if its effective consecration, by the hand of Lorenzo da Ponte, took
place only almost twenty years later, in 1763 when by now it was clear
that the state of the building, with the facade left unfinished due of
the lack of financial means, could now be said to be definitive.
The painter Jacopo Marieschi was called to decorate the building, who
painted the Madonna and Saint Lorenzo Giustiniani in glory and the Holy
Trinity (1743), once placed on the ceiling and now kept in Palazzo
Contarini del Bovolo, and the altarpiece of the main altar with the
Madonna and Child with Saints Lorenzo Giustiniani, Margherita da
Cortona, Maria Maddalena, Domenico and Rosa da Lima (1744).