Santa Maria di Nazareth (Scalzi).
During our first visit to Venice, in 2017, we stumbled upon a large building covered in canvases next to the central station of the city. The building was open to the public, but we paid no attention to it, for the simple reason that it did not look very appealing. We quickly crossed the bridge over the Canal Grande and followed the whirling streets towards the Piazza San Marco. Only much later did we learn that behind the canvases was an interesting church, that of Santa Maria di Nazareth, alternatively known as the Scalzi. It is said (and in fact confirmed by one of my travel guides) that the church has the only façade in Venice made of Carrara marble. Apparently this type of marble does not like the salty air of the city very much, and that must have been the reason that the exterior of the church was restored back in 2017. Apart from the special façade the Scalzi is also famous for another reason. It was here that the last doge of the Venetian Republic, Ludovico Manin (1789-1797), found his final resting place.
History and art
Santa Maria di Nazareth was built as a church for the Discalced Carmelites, hence the nickname Scalzi. The order of the Carmelites had been founded in the early thirteenth century in the Holy Land and had been named after Mount Carmel near Haifa. When the Crusader states collapsed, the Carmelites were forced to leave for Europe. In the last quarter of the sixteenth century the more orthodox Discalced Carmelites split from the main order. From Spain the new order then spread across Europe. And so it came about that several decades later their first representatives arrived in Venice. They obviously needed a church and hired the architect Baldassare Longhena (1598-1682) to build one for them. As of 1673 the construction was led by a lay Carmelite, a certain Giuseppe Pozzo (1645-1721). He was the brother of the more famous Andrea Pozzo (1642-1709), who was not just an architect and painter but also a lay brother with the Jesuits. In 1689 the Santa Maria di Nazareth was completed and in 1705 the church was consecrated. The façade of the building, already mentioned above, is a work by the Venetian architect Giuseppe Sardi (1624-1699). To the left of the church arose a monastic complex, which was demolished after the unification of Italy to make room for the Venezia Santa Lucia railway station.
Canal Grande with the church of San Simeone Piccolo.
The church is also a prime example of Baroque architecture in Venice. This holds true for its exterior with Sardi’s façade, but perhaps even more for its extravagant interior. Unfortunately, the proximity of the railway station proved to be a curse rather than a blessing during World War One. On 24 October 1915 the Austrians with their primitive air force tried to bomb the station, but they hit the church instead. The enormous ceiling fresco by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770), representing the transport of the Holy House of Loreto, was heavily damaged. What remained of the fresco was later moved to the Accademia. The current ceiling fresco is a work by Ettore Tito (1859-1941). From an artistic point of view the Cappella Ruzzini on the right side is probably the most interesting chapel. Here we find Tiepolo’s ceiling fresco of the apotheosis of Saint Teresa of Ávila and a relief of Teresa by the German sculptor Heinrich Meyring (ca. 1638-1723; see Valsanzibio: Villa Barbarigo). The mystic Ávila (1515-1582) was one of the founders of the Discalced Carmelites. She is of course also known from a controversial sculpture that Bernini made of her in Rome. Compared to Bernini’s creation Meyring’s work is rather chaste.
Ludovico Manin
Interior of the church.
In the Cappella Manin on the left side we find the final resting place of Ludovico Manin. He was born in 1726 as a scion of a family that originally came from the Friuli. This certainly did not make him a foreigner, as the Friuli had been part of the Serenissma’s terra firma, her territories on the Italian mainland, since the early fifteenth century. That is why in the city of Udine we find a city hall that looks a lot like the Palazzo Ducale or Doge’s Palace itself. Since 1651 the Manin family belonged to the Venetian aristocracy. This was, by the way, not a matter of merit: Ludovico’s ancestors had paid the sum of 100,000 ducats to become patricians.[1] In 1789 Ludovico Manin was the first of his family to be elected Doge of Venice. He may not have been a foreigner, but he was definitely a relative outsider.
These were difficult times for the Republic of Venice. In France the Revolution had put an end to the monarchy, and revolutionary France was at loggerheads with Austria. It was crystal-clear that the new war would be fought in the north of Italy. When this war started in late 1795, Venice desperately tried to remain neutral, as the Republic no longer had a serious army. Nevertheless, it was impossible not to get involved in the conflict, as neither the French nor the Austrians could reasonably manoeuvre around the terra firma. The French army in Italy was led by the young and ambitious Napoleon Bonaparte, who won victory after victory over his Austrian opponents and ultimately invaded Venetian territory in the process. Napoleon personally disliked the Venetian Republic intensely, although his hatred seems to have at least partially been based on ignorance.
In 1797 the French victories led to the treaties of Leoben (April) and Campo Formio (October). Austria was forced to cede Lombardy and got the Venetian terra firma instead. What Venice herself thought of the deal was immaterial. In fact, well before the second treaty had been signed, the Venetian Republic had already been dissolved. With French canons in position to bombard the city, the Maggior Consiglio or Great Council met in the Doge’s Palace on 12 May 1797. With 512 votes in favour, 20 against and 5 abstentions the Council had approved to dissolution of the Republic. It was apparently irrelevant that, with just 537 councillors present, the Maggior Consiglio had even failed to reach a quorum. The decision also meant the end for Ludovico Manin as doge. The great British popular historian John Julius Norwich described his abdication as follows:
“Ludovico Manin himself made no attempt to flee. Almost alone among his fellow-nobles, he had maintained a quiet calm amid the hubbub – a calm born, perhaps, of fatalism or even of despair, but a calm none the less that enabled him to keep his dignity, even while the last frail structure of the Republic crumbled about him. In the sudden stillness that followed the break-up of the meeting he slowly gathered up his papers and withdrew to his private apartments. There, having laid aside his ducal corno, he carefully untied the ribbons of the close-fitting cap of white linen worn beneath it, the cuffietta, and handed it to his valet, Bernardo Trevisan, with those sad words which, more than any others, seem to symbolize the fall of Venice: ‘Tolè, questa non la dopero più’ (‘Take it, I shall not be needing it again’).”[2]
Manin was forced to surrender the regalia of the doge to the new democratic authorities of Venice, who had them ritually burned. Images of previous doges, such as those of Francesco Foscari and Andrea Gritti on the Doge’s Palace, were destroyed. Against this background it is quite understandable that, when Ludovico Manin died in 1802, he was not granted a magnificent funerary monument. His “tomb” in the church of the Scalzi is no more than a simple slab with the Manin family name written on it. If it had not been for the presence of an information panel, we would very likely have missed it altogether.
Sources: Trotter and Dorling Kindersley travel guides, The Churches of Venice: Cannaregio and John Julius Norwich, ‘A History of Venice’.
Notes
[1] John Julius Norwich, ‘A History of Venice’ (2012), p. 605.
[2] ‘A History of Venice’ (2012), p. 631.