In the 15th century, the area of the current church housed a monastery of Cistercian nuns who had moved here from Torcello, the nearby islands now largely uninhabitable. In 1472 a hospice was built with an annexed small church, which is shown in the plan of Venice made by Jacopo de' Barbari. This was replaced from 1505 by the current building, consecrated in 1586. The church and the nunnery were suppressed by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807 and left abandoned until turned them into a convalescent facility for elderly people. Later the monastery became a hospital, active until the mid-1990s, while the church, contained in the former's perimeter, was used for religious functions for recovered people. It now forms part of the Giustinian Hospital.
Description
The church's façade is divided into three vertical sectors, corresponding to the nave and aisles of the interior. The portal has a simple structure, flanked and surmounted by arched, large windows. The church has a bell tower with a top in Baroque top.
Description
The high facade is divided vertically into three. The church is flanked on the left side by the bell tower. Internally, the church has a single nave with no aisle. There is a large gallery for the nuns at the back of the church.
Works of Art
On 13 March 1673 Agostino Litterini received an important commission from Abbess Teodora Sansonio for the decoration of the main chapel in collaboration with the painter Bologna Giacomo Grassi. Litterini painted a fresco of The Last Supper in the apse. He also painted The Glory of Paradisein the vault of the same chapel. Because of the stylistic similarities, it is possible to assume the same painters worked on the frescoes in the two side chapels of the presbytery. In the left one, which belongs to the Michiel family, Litterini painted God the Father at the back of the chapel and four Virtues in the vault. In the Battaglia Chapel, on the right, are the Virgin in Glory and two angels bearing flowers and fruit.
In Place
In the apse above the choir is a fresco of The Last Supper by Agostino Litterini and Giacomo Grassi.
In the vault above the altar is a fresco of The Glory of Paradise by Agostino Litterini and Giacomo Grassi.
