Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Bartolomeo's nephew Alvise depicts Jesus in later years in his splendidly restored 1494
Saviour Blessing
, in which Christ has a cloudlike beard and eyes that seem to follow you
around the room.
CHIESA DI SAN GIORGIO DEI GRECI
MAP
CHURCH
GOOGLE MAP
( 041 522 65 81; Campiello dei Greci 3412; 9am-12.30pm & 2.30-4.30pm Wed-Sat & Mon, 9am-1pm Sun;
Pietà )
F
Greek Orthodox refugees who fled to Venice from Turkey with the rise of the
Ottoman Empire built a church here in 1536, with the aid of a special dispensation from
Venice to collect taxes on incoming Greek ships. Nicknamed 'St George of the Greeks',
the little church has an impressive iconostasis, and clouds of fine incense linger over ser-
vices. The separate, slender
bell tower
was completed in 1603, though it began to lean right
from the start; these days, it seems poised to dive into the canal on which the church sits.
Permission for the church was granted in the late 15th century in acknowledgement of
the growing importance of the Greek community in the city, which at its peak numbered
around 4000. Greek scholars contributed greatly to Venice's dominance in the printing
trade, and thereby to its eminence as a seat of Renaissance learning.
While the exterior is classically Venetian, the interior is Orthodox in style: the aisleless
nave is surrounded by dark, wooden stalls and there's a
matroneo
(women's gallery). All
eyes, however, are drawn to the golden iconostasis with its 46 icons, the majority of which
are the work of 16th-century Cretan artist Michael Danaskinà s. Other fabulous works by
the Venetian school of icon painters can be found in the Museo delle Icone (
Click here
).
TOP SIGHT
SCUOLA DI SAN GIORGIO DEGLI SCHIAVONI
In the 15th century, Venice annexed Dalmatia - an area roughly corresponding to the former Yugoslavia - and
large numbers of Dalmatians, known as Schiavoni, emigrated to Venice. In a testament to Venetian pluralism,
they were granted their own
scuola
(religious confraternity) in 1451. Around 1500, they began building their
headquarters, making the brilliant decision to hire Vittore Carpaccio (also of Dalmatian descent) to complete an
extraordinary cycle of paintings of Dalmatia's patron saints George, Tryphone and Jerome.
Though Carpaccio never left Venice, his scenes with Dalmatian backdrops are minutely detailed. But the real
brilliance of Carpaccio's imagined worlds are their engaging narrative power: St George charges a lizard-like
dragon across a Libyan desert scattered with half-eaten corpses; St Jerome leads his tame-looking lion into a
monastery, scattering friars like a flock of lagoon birds; and St Augustine, watched by his dog, is distracted from
correspondence by a heavenly voice informing him of Jerome's death.
