The Scuola Grande di San Marco is a Renaissance building, located in the Castello district, founded by the school of the same name, which overlooks Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. It constitutes the current main entrance of the Civil Hospital SS. John and Paul.
The school was the seat of a confraternity of the beaten and was
established in 1260, had its first seat in the demolished church of
Santa Croce (in the area of today's Papadopoli gardens). In 1437 the
Dominicans of the nearby Basilica of Saints John and Paul granted an
adjacent area for the construction of a new headquarters, which in 1485
was devastated by a great fire. Within twenty years the School was
restructured, thanks to the fund that the brotherhood established among
its affiliates and the support given by the Pregadi Council.
The
works, initially directed by Pietro Lombardo and Giovanni Buora, were
entrusted in 1490 to Mauro Codussi, who completed the facade and built
the internal staircase. In the 16th century the façade towards the Rio
dei Mendicanti was built, apparently with the contribution of Jacopo
Sansovino.
In 1807, under Napoleonic rule, the confraternity was
suppressed: the building was first the site of an Austrian military
hospital and was later transformed into a civil hospital, substantially
altering the interior.
The facade, a delicate composition of newsstands, Corinthian
pilasters and statues in white and polychrome marble is a Renaissance
jewel. It is divided into two parts, corresponding to the hall on the
left and the hotel on the right.
The marble decoration and the
high reliefs of the lower part (two Lions of St. Mark and stories of San
Marco) are attributed to the Lombardo workshop. The main portal has a
porch with columns resting on finely carved plinths. The archivolt has a
high relief in the lunette (San Marco venerated by the brothers)
generally attributed to Bartolomeo Bon, as well as the statue of Charity
above. Codussi then created the facade of the hotel and the upper
crowning with lunettes with statues.
The staircase on the ground floor is a twentieth-century
reconstruction of the one created by Codussi and demolished with the
transformation of the building into a hospital.
Upstairs are the
hall and lounge of the hotel, with splendid coffered ceilings with
gilded finishes. They had a very rich pictorial decoration which, unlike
what happened to the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, was lost after the
suppression of the confraternity. Some canvases with stories of San
Marco by Jacopo Palma il Vecchio, with the large canvas Storm at sea,
Jacopo Palma il Giovane, Domenico Tintoretto, Nicolas Régnier, Vittore
Belliniano and Padovanino have been brought back to their original
location. Other paintings with a similar subject by Jacopo Tintoretto
(including the Miracle of San Marco), Paris Bordone, Gentile and
Giovanni Bellini, Giovanni Mansueti, are exhibited at the Gallerie
dell'Accademia or at the Pinacoteca di Brera.