Description
The church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, in Cannaregio, is a small Renaissance temple faced in colored marble, one of the very first in Venice in this style. It looks onto a canal, and it is easy to walk past it without noticing, but it is worth a stop.
It all began with a votive painting hung on the corner of a house: a Madonna and Child commissioned in 1408 for the family of the silk merchant Amadi. People in the neighborhood asked it for favors, and by all accounts they were granted.
The miracles were so many that in 1480 it was decided to build a church specially to house the picture. The project went to Pietro Lombardo, who with his sons Tullio and Antonio finished it in eight years, between 1481 and 1489.
Outside, the façade is a mosaic of polychrome marbles: Istrian stone, serpentine, yellow, red, laid out in panels, crosses, stars and wheels. At the top is a large semicircular pediment with a rose window and small oculi.
Inside there is a single nave, with a coffered barrel vault in gold: fifty panels are painted with small prophets and patriarchs. The presbytery is raised, at the top of a steep staircase, and is entirely of different marbles.
The miraculous picture is still there, on the high altar: a small panel with the Madonna standing on a flowering meadow, against a red background. On either side, two statues of Saint Peter and Saint Anthony Abbot.
Not to be missed, at the base of the columns of the triumphal arch, are the mysterious tritons carved by Tullio and Antonio Lombardo: creatures with fish tails, leaf-shaped legs and wings, with putti on their tails.
According to scholars, the group evokes a passage into the afterlife, conceived as a crossing of the sea. The two sides are different: on the left a dramatic, asymmetrical scene, on the right a composed, symmetrical one.
Also look for the large cross of porphyry discs on the back wall, the roundels with the Evangelists and the stained-glass window with Christ in the tomb.
It all began with a votive painting hung on the corner of a house: a Madonna and Child commissioned in 1408 for the family of the silk merchant Amadi. People in the neighborhood asked it for favors, and by all accounts they were granted.
The miracles were so many that in 1480 it was decided to build a church specially to house the picture. The project went to Pietro Lombardo, who with his sons Tullio and Antonio finished it in eight years, between 1481 and 1489.
Outside, the façade is a mosaic of polychrome marbles: Istrian stone, serpentine, yellow, red, laid out in panels, crosses, stars and wheels. At the top is a large semicircular pediment with a rose window and small oculi.
Inside there is a single nave, with a coffered barrel vault in gold: fifty panels are painted with small prophets and patriarchs. The presbytery is raised, at the top of a steep staircase, and is entirely of different marbles.
The miraculous picture is still there, on the high altar: a small panel with the Madonna standing on a flowering meadow, against a red background. On either side, two statues of Saint Peter and Saint Anthony Abbot.
Not to be missed, at the base of the columns of the triumphal arch, are the mysterious tritons carved by Tullio and Antonio Lombardo: creatures with fish tails, leaf-shaped legs and wings, with putti on their tails.
According to scholars, the group evokes a passage into the afterlife, conceived as a crossing of the sea. The two sides are different: on the left a dramatic, asymmetrical scene, on the right a composed, symmetrical one.
Also look for the large cross of porphyry discs on the back wall, the roundels with the Evangelists and the stained-glass window with Christ in the tomb.