Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice

Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the Venetian San Zanipolo or only Zanipolo, is a church in Venice, in the Castello district.

Zanipolo is a monastery church of the Dominicans. It is the largest and most important religious building in Venetian Gothic style of the 14th and 15th century. She was the preferred burial church of the Doges and numerous noble families. Church patrons are not the same two Apostles but John and Paul in Rome, two martyrs from the time of Constantine the Great.

Architecture

Zanipolo is a three-aisled basilica with a transept pillars to which join a medium sized and two small chapels. All chapels have a polygonal circuit. Except for the crossing, which is überkuppelt, all components have a ribbed vault.

The nave is 96 m long, 28 m wide in the nave, the transept is 43 m wide, the arch height is about 35 m.

The church is a brick building. Decorative elements on the exterior, like the frames of the oculi, the friezes, the coronary Gesimsabschluß and the high Tabernacle on the facade and the portal are made of Istrian stone. The stone vaults are made ​​of plastered cane to reduce the weight because of the problematic subsoil. The building is stabilized as in other Venetian churches, by wooden tie rods.

Architectural History

1245 gave the Doge Jacopo Tiepolo the Order of the Dominicans a piece of land to build a church, then at the edge of the city and in the distance to the Frari Church, of competing with the Dominicans mendicant order of the Franciscans, who had in 1234 acquired their plot. When was begun with the construction of Saints John and Paul, is not known, the first solid construction date is supported by an inscription of 1369 in the transept. 1430, the church was consecrated. 1437 bought the financially strong brotherhood of goldsmiths and silk merchant, the Scuola San Marco, an adjacent plot of land to build a brotherhood building and made the Dominicans generous foundations for the further construction of the church. Around the middle of the 15th century the chancel was built in the 15th century and completed the dome.

1458 could be given with the architect Bartolomeo Bon in order on the basis of donations the portal came for the ancient columns from Torcello used.

1575-1582 was donated in memory of the Battle of Lepanto of the Rosary Confraternity Rosary Chapel ( Cappella del Rosario ). It was built to a design by Alessandro Vittoria. This chapel was destroyed by a fire in 1867. Its present appearance owes a restoration from 1913. Between 1638 and 1663 the main altar from designs by Baldassare Longhena and Francesco Cavrioli was built. 1682 the choir has been removed, so that the large church comes into its own. Beginning of the 18th century, the Cappella di San Domenico was built.

The construction was largely financed by donations. Thus, the establishment of family chapels and grave sites in churches has always been associated with regular donations for trade shows, which were continued by the families and heirs to secure the memory of the deceased.

Equipment

Saints John and Paul was the favorite place of the grave Venetian Doge. In the church are among many other grave monuments of Venetian nobles alone 26 Dogengrabmäler from the Gothic to the Baroque. As the first Doge there, the patron of the Dominican Jacopo Tiepolo was buried in 1249. His simple grave laying marble is located on the outer facade wall.

The skin of the 1571 killed by the Turks governor of Cyprus, Marcantonio Bragadin located in the right aisle of the church built in 1596 in a tomb.

Since the mid-15th century. the leading men of the Venetian Republic were buried here. Also, some artists, Gentile Bellini, Giovanni Bellini, Lorenzo Lotto and Jacopo Palma the Younger have their final resting place here. The wall tombs offer at the beginning of the Renaissance new possibilities to combine sculpture and architecture. The human ' plastic had from the integration into the facade design of the great cathedrals in the Middle Ages, especially in the portal zone out developed into a increasingly independent, free-standing figure. These tombs in the church interior walls here are a new composition of the plastic allows a considerably higher life of its own as the jamb figures of the previous high Middle Ages.

Right next to the church is the former Scuola Grande di San Marco, which is now used as a hospital.