The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

the Cappella Santa, which has a Madonna and Child by Giovanni Bellini and
assistants.
Back in the church, the first chapel after the cloister door (another Giustiniani
chapel) contains a gorgeous Sacra Conversazione painted by Veronese
in 1562, following the model of Titian’s Pésaro altarpiece in the Frari. The
predominantly monochromatic decoration of the Cappella Sagredo, the next
chapel but one, was created in the eighteenth century, and features frescoes of
the Evangelists and two Virtues by Giambattista Tiepolo. On the altarpiece of
the adjacent chapel you’ll find figures of St Anthony Abbot, St Sebastian and St
Roch by Alessandro Vittoria, who also made bronze figures of St Francis and
John the Baptist that should be on the nearby water stoups, but only the former
has returned from restoration. Finally, on the entrance wall, to the left as you
leave, there’s a fine triptych attributed to Antonio Vivarini.
Around San Francesco
East of San Francesco is a remote corner that can be summarized as a vaporetto
stop (Celestia), a scummy backwater of a canal, and a view of the wall of the
oldest part of the Arsenale. Immediately to the south (the route to San Giorgio
degli Schiavoni) lies an area that is destitute of monuments but could stand
as the epitome of domestic Venice – densely textured, in places grotty and in
others picturesque. The Salizzada and Campo delle Gatte (“paved street and
square of the female cats”) are typical of the district; the peculiar name of this
unexceptionally catty avenue is a corruption of “de legate”, from the papal
legates who used to stay here. An oddity to seek out is the sottoportego on the
corner of Calle Zorzi and Corte Nuova (take the alley that goes south from
Campo Santa Giustina and keep going): it’s an open-air chapel, with a carved
and painted ceiling, a couple of shrines dedicated to the dead of various wars,
and four paintings so flaked and grimy that they could depict anything.
San Giorgio degli Schiavoni
Venice has two brilliant cycles of pictures by Vittore Carpaccio, the most
disarming of Venetian artists – one is in the Accademia, the other is in the
Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni (April–Oct Tues–Sat 9.30am–
12.30pm & 3.30–6.30pm, Sun 9.30am–12.30pm; Nov–March Tues–Sat
10am–12.30pm & 3–6pm, Sun 10am–12.30pm; e3). Venice’s relations with
the Slavs (schiavoni) were not always untroubled – the city’s slave markets were
originally stocked with captured Slavs, and in later centuries the settlements
of the Dalmatian coast were a harassment to Venetian shipping.
By the mid-fifteenth century, though, Venice’s Slavic inhabitants – many of
them sailors and merchants – were sufficiently established for a scuola to be set
up in order to protect their interests. After several years of meeting in the church
of San Giovanni di Malta, the scuola built itself a new headquarters on the
church’s doorstep at the start of the sixteenth century, and summoned Carpaccio
to brighten up the first-storey hall. Painted from 1502 to 1508, after the Accademia’s
St Ursula cycle, Carpaccio’s pictures were moved downstairs when the
building was rearranged in 1551, and the interior has scarcely changed since.
The cycle illustrates mainly the lives of the Dalmatian patron saints
– George, Tryphone and Jerome. As always with Carpaccio, what holds your
attention is not so much the main event as the incidental details with which
he packs the scene, and the incidentals in this cycle feature some of the most
arresting images in Venetian painting, from the limb-strewn feeding-ground
of Saint George’s dragon in the first scene of the cycle, to the endearing little
eastern castello
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San Francesco della Vigna to the waterfront
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