Santa Maria della Salute Audio Guide

Santa Maria della Salute: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Santa Maria della Salute

   Welcome to Santa Maria della Salute, the church Venetians simply call La Salute. Its name means Saint Mary of Health, and you are standing on the Dorsoduro side of the city, at the Punta della Dogana. This is the tip of land where the Grand Canal meets the Giudecca Canal. The church stands at the entrance to the Grand Canal. Its white marble facade and grand domes are among the best-known landmarks in Venice. It is a Roman Catholic church and a minor basilica, and it is still part of the city's religious life, especially during the yearly Festa della Madonna della Salute. Over the next few minutes we will cover why it was built, how a bold architect won the commission, and what the odd, rotating shape of the building is doing. We will also look at the theatrical statues inside, and at the festival that still brings Venetians here every November. Take a moment to look at the building first. Its eight-sided form means it shows you a different face from almost every angle.

2. 02

   A Promise Made in a Plague

   This church is a vow made in stone. In 1630 a terrible plague struck Venice, and it killed a large part of the population between 1630 and 1631. Displays of the sacrament, prayers, and processions to churches dedicated to Saint Roch and Saint Lorenzo Giustiniani had all failed to stop the epidemic. So on the twenty-second of October 1630 the Venetian Senate decreed that a new church would be built, dedicated to the Virgin, in thanksgiving for deliverance. Venice had done something similar before. After an earlier outbreak of plague in 1575 and 1576, the city commissioned Palladio to design the Redentore church. Salute follows that tradition, but on an even grander scale. The site was no small matter either. To make room, a suppressed religious complex was demolished: the church of the Most Holy Trinity, with its convent and school, beside the old customs house at the point. Building on that ground required a great number of piles driven into the soil, and extensive reclamation of the land. Even so, the first pilgrimage of thanks took place on the twenty-eighth of November 1631, while the church itself was still only beginning to rise.

3. 03

   Longhena's Winning Design

   The Senate held a competition, and the proposals tell a story. Designs by Belli and Smeraldi were conventional, long Counter-Reformation churches, much like Palladio's Redentore and San Giorgio Maggiore. Alessandro Varotari offered something closer to a sketchy geometrical abstraction. Baldassare Longhena submitted a concrete architectural plan, with the structure and the costs set out, and he won. He described his idea as a church in the form of a crown, to be dedicated to the Virgin. The plan is an octagonal main body with a deep walkway around it, onto which open six square chapels. Beyond that come a rectangular presbytery with two apses and a rectangular choir holding the high altar. Historians note that the octagon, though wrapped in a classical vocabulary, recalls Byzantine designs such as the Basilica of San Vitale. Longhena was young when he began, and this became his masterpiece. Work ran from 1631 or 1632 until 1687. In that year the patriarch Alvise Sagredo blessed the finished church on the ninth of November.

4. 04

   Stone, Light and Baroque Theater

   Now look at the exterior. The main body is built of white Istrian stone, which reflects the light and contrasts with the shadows gathering in the recesses. The domes are covered in gray lead plates, and together with the lagoon atmosphere they give the whole church a luminous quality. The great central dome sits on an octagonal drum. Pairs of scroll-shaped buttresses link it to the body of the church. They help carry the dome's weight, and they also give the building a rotating, swirling movement. The capitals of the columns are carved in the richly ornate Composite Order, which combines the scroll with acanthus leaves. Inside, Longhena staged a spectacle. From the entrance you see the chancel arch framing the high altar, but the six side altars are hidden, because the piers supporting the dome block them. This is an effect he learned from Palladio's Redentore. Around the central space, a ring of saints stands atop a balustrade. At the high altar, a statuary group shows the Queen of Heaven expelling the Plague. It dates from 1670 and is by the Flemish sculptor Josse de Corte. It is a theatrical Baroque masterpiece, and it replaced the place where Varotari's painting of the Virgin holding a church had hung.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Longhena designed the church as a stage set for an annual celebration, the Festa della Salute. It falls on the Feast of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary, the twenty-first of November. In the past the doge made a ceremonial procession from San Marco to this church, and the festival still gives Santa Maria della Salute a role in Venetian life. Before you go, try walking slowly around the outside and notice how the eight-sided form keeps changing its profile. See how the white stone and the gray domes shift with the light off the water. Then, if you can, step inside and stand at the entrance to feel that carefully staged view toward the high altar. There is more to find in the side altars too. One is dedicated to Saint Anthony, with a painting by Pietro Liberi, and another to the Annunciation, with a painting attributed to him. Each one is a small chapter in a church that began as a promise.