The church of Santa Sofia is a religious building in the city of Venice, located in the Cannaregio district.
Commissioned in this position by the noble Gussoni family and by
Giorgio Tribuno in 1020, in its first construction it had three naves
with octagonal apses.
The church was much loved by the musician
Benedetto Marcello who composed several of his famous Psalms for it. In
this church he wanted his funeral to take place.
The church
underwent a major downsizing in the structure in the nineteenth century,
when the Strada Nova was created. The widening works of this road, which
lead from the Ponte delle Guglie to the parish of Santi Apostoli forced
the Venetians to reduce its dimensions.
It was suppressed in
1810, and then sold to a Jewish merchant, who transformed it into a
warehouse and dispersed the furnishings. The church was reopened for
worship in 1836 as a branch of San Felice.
The upper part of the building, with its bell tower, can be seen
emerging half hidden by the houses, facing the field of the same name.
It underwent a restructuring in 1225, then in the fifteenth century,
in 1508, and the last one in the last years of the seventeenth century,
by Antonio Gaspari, who gave it its current appearance.
Today it
can be accessed from a vestibule located between the houses facing the
Strada Nova.
The bell tower retains a part of the original cane,
but it is clear from the structure that it has been resized, perhaps due
to stability problems. Before this resizing it had two orders of
pilasters, a triumphal cell and a cusp crown.
The interior has a basilica plan with the dome placed at the junction
of the arms and has maintained the three naves, with round arches of the
nave and the presbytery.
On the sides of the entrance and the
high altar there are four marble statues from the circle of Antonio
Rizzo, dating back to the second half of the 15th century. They
represent Represent: San Luca, Sant'Andrea, San Cosma and San Damiano.
Above the side door along the right wall there is a deposed Christ
with angels from the school of Palma il Giovane.
In the
presbytery you can see:
Baptism of Jesus, altarpiece by Daniel
Heintz, placed on the bottom;
Christ mocked, from the Bassano school,
on the left side;
Adoration of the Magi, also from the Bassano
school, on the right side.
On the second altar on the left is the
Madonna and Child with Saint Anthony and Saint Veneranda, the work of
Giovanni Battista Maganza il Giovane (1577–1617) from Vicenza.
On
the small adjacent altar there is a Gothic sculpture dating back to the
fourteenth century, somewhat deteriorated, depicting the Madonna and
Child. The work is created in the manner of the Flemish sculptor André
Beauneveu and comes from the church of Santa Maria dei Servi, now
demolished.
On the wall Baptism of Jesus, work attributed to
Pietro de Mera.