The Querini-Stampalia and Museo Diocesano
Some of the most impressive palaces in the city stand on the island immediately
to the south of Santa Maria Formosa. Turn first left off Ruga Giuffa
and you’ll be confronted by the land entrance of the gargantuan sixteenthcentury
Palazzo Grimani, once owned by the branch of the Grimani family
whose collection of antiquities became the basis of the Museo Archeologico;
the interior – one of the most spectacular in the city – is being refurbished to
display statuary that’s too large to be installed in the archeological museum.
For a decent view of the exterior you have to cross the Rio San Severo, which
also runs past the Gothic Palazzo Zorzi-Bon and Codussi’s neighbouring
Palazzo Zorzi.
On the south side of Campo Santa Maria Formosa, a graceful little footbridge
curves over a narrow canal and into the Palazzo Querini-Stampalia. The
palace was built in the sixteenth century for a branch of the ancient Querini
family, several of whom took refuge on the Greek island of Stampalia after
their implication in the Bajamonte Tiepolo plot of 1310; when the errant clan
was readmitted to Venice, they returned bearing their melodic new double
barrelled name. The last Querini-Stampalia expired in 1868, bequeathing
his home and its contents to the city, and the palace now houses one of the
city’s quirkier collections, the Pinacoteca Querini-Stampalia (Tues–Thurs
& Sun 10am–6pm, Fri & Sat 10am–10pm; e8). Although there is a batch of
Renaissance pieces – such as Palma il Vecchio’s marriage portraits of Francesco
Querini and Paola Priuli Querini (for whom the palace was built), and
Giovanni Bellini’s Presentation in the Temple – the general tone of the collection
is set by the culture of eighteenth-century Venice, a period to which much
of the palace’s decor belongs. The winningly inept pieces by Gabriel Bella
form a comprehensive record of Venetian social life in that century, and genre
paintings by Pietro and Alessandro Longhi, a few rungs up the aesthetic ladder,
feature prominently as well. All in all, unless you’ve a voracious appetite
for Venice’s twilight decades, the Querini-Stampalia isn’t going to thrill you,
but it does offer a diversion on a Friday or Saturday evening, when concerts
by the Scuola di Musica Antica di Venezia (at 5pm and 8.30pm) are included
in the price of the entrance ticket. One other notable aspect of this museum
is that its ground-floor rooms (where good contemporary art shows are often
held) were brilliantly refashioned in the 1960s by Carlo Scarpa, who also
designed the entrance bridge and the garden – an ensemble that constitutes
one of Venice’s extremely rare examples of first-class modern architecture.
South of the Querini-Stampalia stands the crumbly, deconsecrated and
unused church of San Giovanni Nuovo, better known as San Giovanni in
Oleo, a name which comes from the Evangelist’s hideous martyrdom – he
was killed in a vat of boiling oil. Beyond here you come down onto Campo
Santi Filippo e Giacomo, which tapers west towards the bridge over the
Rio di Palazzo, at the back of the Palazzo Ducale. Just before the bridge, a
short fondamenta on the left leads to the early fourteenth-century cloister of
Sant’Apollonia, the only Romanesque cloister in the city. Fragments from
the Basilica di San Marco dating back to the ninth century are displayed here,
and a miscellany of sculptural pieces from other churches is on show in the
adjoining Museo Diocesano d’Arte Sacra (daily 10.30am–12.30pm; donation
requested), where the permanent collection consists chiefly of a range of
religious artefacts and paintings gathered from churches that have closed down
or entrusted their possessions to the safety of the museum. In addition, freshly
restored works from other collections or churches sometimes pass through
here, giving the museum an edge of unpredictability. On show at present are
two statues, Faith and Hope, which were recovered after thieves stole them
from the island of San Clemente by wrapping them in tyres and dragging
them off along the sea bed. You can see the tyre marks on their backs.
The sixteenth-century Palazzo Trevisan-Cappello, opposite the Fondamenta
della Canonica (beyond the bridge), was once the home of Bianca
Cappello, who was sentenced to death in her absence for eloping with Pietro
Bonaventuri, a humble bank clerk at the local branch of the Salviati bank, a
Florentine institution. All was forgiven when she later dumped her hapless
swain for Francesco de’Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, whom she eventually
married, having endured banishment from Florence by the Grand Duke’s first
wife. The pair bought this palazzo together, and died together in 1587. They
were probably killed by a virulent fever, but there was a strong suspicion that
they had been poisoned by another Medici, which rather embarrassed the
Venetians, who couldn’t publicly mourn their “daughter of the Republic” for
fear of offending the couple’s unknown but probably influential murderer.
These days the bridge which leads into the palazzo is the entrance to lace and
glass showrooms.

Renaissance sculpture
Venetian sculpture in the Renaissance was conditioned by the society’s ingrained
aversion to the over-glorification of the individual and by the specific restrictions
of the city’s landscape. Freestanding monumental work of the sort that was being
commissioned all over Italy is conspicuous by its absence. The exception to prove
the rule, the monument to Colleoni, was made by the Florentine artist Verrocchio.
Venetian sculptors worked mainly to decorate tombs or the walls of
churches, and up to the late Renaissance no clear distinction was made between
sculptors, masons and architects. Beyond the Renaissance, sculpture was generally
commissioned as part of an architectural project, and it’s usually futile to try to
disentangle the sculpture from its architectural function.
Pietro Lombardo (c.1438–1515) was born in Cremona and went to Rome
before arriving in Venice around 1460. His development can be charted in the
church of San Zanipolo; his first major monument, the tomb of Doge Pasquale
Malipiero, is pictorially flat and smothered with carved decoration, but the monument
to Doge Pietro Mocenigo, with its classicized architectural elements and
figures, is a fully Renaissance piece. In true Venetian style the latter glorifies the
State through the man, rather than stressing his individual salvation – the image
of Christ is easily overlooked. Pietro’s sons Antonio (c.1458–c.1516) and Tullio
(c.1460–1532) were also sculptors and assisted him on the Mocenigo monument.
Tullio’s independent work is less pictorial; his monument to Doge Andrea Vendramin
(also in San Zanipolo) is a complex architectural evocation of a Roman
triumphal arch, though again the whole is encrusted with decorative figures.
Jacopo Sansovino, who went on to become the Republic’s principal architect,
was known as a sculptor when he arrived in Venice from Rome in 1527. More
of a classicist than his predecessors, he nonetheless produced work remarkably in
tune with Venetian sensibilities – his figures on the logetta of the Campanile, for
example, animate the surface of the building rather than draw attention to themselves.
Alessandro Vittoria was the major sculptor of the middle and later part
of the century; originally a member of Sansovino’s workshop, Vittoria developed
a more rhetorical style, well demonstrated in the figures of St Jerome in the Frari
and San Zanipolo.