Getting to Know a Venetian Church: Santa Maria Assunta

Margotlog: Getting to Know a Venetian Church: Santa Maria Assunta

John Ruskin, the 19th-century British art critic and historian, is said to have complained that most American and English tourists to Venice will "dash through the  Basilica di S. Maria della Salute,"  paying no more heed to the gems by Tintoretto and Titian than they would to clothes on a line.

Determined not to be such a dolt, I spent hours a few days after arriving, getting into a slow moving vaporetto (rapid only in comparison to a row boat), and making my way with others crammed on board to the Campo della Salute. Another visitor, a well-dressed woman who spoke with a Southern accent (she was African-American) admitted as we paused in the huge campo that she had not much idea what we were supposed to see. In another minute, a friend stepped from a nearby building that announced itself as the "Peggy Gugghenheim Collection." The woman waiting suggested that I join them, but when I explained that I had promised mysef to see the Salute, she nodded and disappeared.

The church was dim and lofty. Chapels held huge paintings, some so high up that I had to crane my neck and shift about to find the right angle for discerning their subject matter. After several turns around the church, with careful study of the art and the artists' names, I became comvinced that I had seen only one Titian.(Maybe modern scholarship had changed the attribution of others?) So many paintings depicted figures in flowing robes ascending into the heavens that the message seemed to be: we all should be full of bliss or awe. But I'm afriad the paintings struck me as old, difficult to see, and repetitive.

The next day's "misty, moisty weather" kept me much closer to Hotel Boccassini. The wind off the lagoon which stretched a far distance, was brutally cold. I held tight to my hood, and to the railings as I forced my way up one steep bridge after another.

It had occurred to me that when I'd visited Venice years before, I had entered a church not far from were I was staying now. It was the Church of Santa Maria Assunta dei Gesuiti. Reaching it again, I was reminded that its imposing marble facade faced a rather narrow strip of open space--nothing like the Salute's command of an enormous espanse of the Canale de San Marco and from there onwards to the Adriate.

Carefully ascending the wet steps, I forced myself against the wind and through a heavy iron door. A few other visitors moved in the vast church, yet I felt as if the dim church belonged only to myself.

"Founded in the 12th century and reconstructed in its current configuration in the 18th century, the church of Santa Maria Assunta has the typical plan of the Jesuit order, and an imposing Baroque facade. The interior decorated with white and green marble inlays on walls and gilded stucco work is absolutely unique in Venice." So described a brochure.

Titians and Tinterettos seemed to be everywhere. The first, "The Martydom of San Lorenzo," by Tiziano Vecello (Titian's true name) pushed the martyr being burned alive over glowing coals, into the lower third of the painting. High in the darkness, like dying coals, came a hint of the divine.This, I told myself, was what Ruskin's adulation of the Salute church had promised. Here, was that sudden adulation confirmed.

Baroque art is perhaps harder to appreciate from our contemporary perspective than, say, Impressionism which has its feet on the ground, and the charm of children rolling hoops in a park. Trying my best to be elevated with the truly magnificant figures--some simple, others in long flowing gowns with cherubs and angels circling on high--soon in the semi-darkness, I began floating, the cherubs and angels almost guiding me into another realm of flying, and adoring.