Over the centuries, diseases have
contributed mightily to great art and architecture.
The church of Santa Maria della Salute
is a case in point. In October of 1630, after nearly a third of Venice's
150,000 citizens had been killed by plague, the Venetian Senate made an
offer to God: "Stop the plague, and we'll build a church to honor the Virgin
Mary."
God came through, or maybe the onset
of cooler weather reduced the population of plague-ridden fleas. Whatever
the reason, the plague was stopped in its tracks. The Venetian authorities
honored their promise by giving the Virgin a prime chunk of real estate
near the tip of Dorsoduro, where the Grand Canal merged with St. Mark's
Basin.
In the resulting competition for
a church design, the winner was an unknown architect named Baldassare Longhena,
who had proposed a massive octagonal basilica that combined elements of
Venetian Byzantine architecture with domes inspired by St. Peter's in Rome.
Longhena described his design as "strange, worthy, and beautiful...in the
shape of a round 'machine' such as had never been seen, or invented either
in its whole or in part from any other church in the city."
The resulting church wasn't completed
until half a century later, in 1682. In The Companion Guide to Venice,
Hugh Honour describes Longhena's legacy:
"If you come to Venice by sea--and
any other approach is like entering a palace through the back door--the
most prominent of the myriad architectural marvels that greet you is the
church of Santa Maria della Salute. As if riding at anchor at the entrance
to the Grand Canal, with its balloon-like dome weighed down by great baroque
scrolls, this fabulous building dominates the scene even more than the
Palazzo Ducale or San Giogio Maggiore. It is the supreme masterpiece of
the Venetian Baroque--and of its author Baldassare Longhena, one of the
few Venetian architects whose personality is strong enough to glimmer through
the mists of history. Contemporaries tell us that he was a short dapper
man, always dressed in black, of quiet and gentle manners. He had the embarrassing
habit of asking everyone he met their openion of whatever work he then
had in hand. But this apparent lack of self-assurance finds no echo in
the magnficently extrovert and ebullient buildings he designed, least of
all in Santa Maria della Salute."
It's beyond the scope of this article
to describe the church's architectural features and interior, which are
best studied while touring the church with Mr. Honour's Companion Guide
in hand. Suffice it to say that the church is massive and awe-inspiring,
with a huge central space surrounded by archways that lead to side chapels.
The basilica and its dramatic steps of white Istrian stone are built on
1,156,627 wooden pilings that remain intact
("The
Human Internet")
