TRAVEL IN A GARDEN: Six maps sculpted in relief at Church of Santa Maria del Giglio, Venice.

Saturday, April 13, 2019

Six maps sculpted in relief at Church of Santa Maria del Giglio, Venice.

Wandering in Venice is always a rewarding activity, above all when you have nothing else to do.

This is how I discovered the Church of Santa Maria del Giglio and its imposing baroque façade conceived by Antonio Barbaro as celebration and perpetuation of his glory and fame.

Antonio Barbaro was born in 1627 in a poor family that lived not far from this church in Sestriere San Marco, but he became a well known character in the political and military life of Venice. In his last will, he left money, detailed instructions and a drawing to transform the façade of the church in a celebration of himself and his family; not an unusual practice in Venice in the Seventeenth century.

"The only religious symbols" writes Ruskin in his Stones of Venice "...being statues of angels blowing brazen trumpets, intended to express the spreading of the fame of the Barbaro family in heaven." The statue of Barbaro, "in armor, with a fantastic head-dress", stands over the entrance, between the personifications of the Glory, the Cardinal Virtues and the statues of his four brothers "in niches, two on each side of it, strutting statues, in the common stage postures of the period." Ruskin lingers on their description while I was more interested in the bas-reliefs of naval battles and of six plans of different towns that decorate the façade.
Ships, sails, waves and clouds sculpted in relief evoke scenes familiar to Barbaro and the plans of the fortified bastions of Zara (Zadar), Candia (Crete), Padua, Rome, the Island of Corfù and Spalato (Split) recall places related to these battles and to his life.

I keep wandering...