Baldassare Longhena

and Venetian Baroque Architecture

Andre w Hopkins
with Photography by

Alessandra Chemollo

ya l e u n i v e rs i t y p r e s s n e w h av e n a n d l o n d o n
 contents
T h e p u b l i c at i o n o f t h i s v o l u m e h a s b e e n m a d e p o s s i b l e b y g e n e r o u s g r a n t s f r o m

t h e G r a h a m F o u n d at i o n o f C h i c a g o a n d

t h e L i l a A c h e s o n Wa l l a c e – R e a d e r ’s D i g e s t P u b l i c at i o n s S u b s i d y at V i l l a I Tat t i .

For deborah

Copyright © 2012 by Andrew Hopkins

Preface to the revised edition in English vii
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, Acknowledgements ix
in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Abbreviations xi
Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law
and except by reviewers for the public press), Introduction xiii
without written permission from the publishers.

1 Venetian Baroque 1
Designed by Emily Lees

Printed in China
2 S. Maria della Salute 57

3 Gradus ad Sapientiam 91
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hopkins, Andrew, 1965– author.

4 C u lt a n d M e m o r y 121
[Baldassare Longhena, 1597–1682. English]
5 P r e s t ig e Pa l a c e s 171
Baldassare Longhena and Venetian Baroque Architecture / Andrew Hopkins. – Revised edition.
p. cm. 6 The Outsider 227
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–300–18109–8 (cl : alk. paper)
1. Longhena, Baldassare, 1598–1682 – Criticism and interpretation. Appendix 1 Life and Works 250
2. Longhena, Baldassare, 1598–1682 – Catalogues raisonnés.
Appendix 2 Critical Appreciation 276
3. Architecture, Baroque – Italy – Venice. 4. Venice (Italy) – Buildings, structures, etc.
I. Chemollo, Alessandra, photographer. II. Title. Appendix 3 List of Works 280
NA1123.L57H6713 2012
720.92 – dc23 Notes 282
2011047035
Bibliography 315
A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library Image sources 348

frontispiece : Mausoleum of Doge Giovanni Pesaro, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, 1665–9, detail. Index 349
 Preface to the
re vised edition in English
The text for the Italian edition was written in the summers of
2004 and 2005 then translated and published in November 2006.
Returning to the original manuscript in 2011 I decided to make a
few substantial changes: whereas the Italian version plunged
directly into a discussion about the Venetian Baroque, a short
introduction has been added here in order to orient readers. In
chapter four, ‘Cult and Memory’, the series of high altars created
by Longhena is presented in a revised order to take into account
important new research and the same is true for chapter five,
‘Prestige Palaces’, where the chronology has been revised following
the discovery of two autograph ground plans by Longhena for the
Pesaro palace, as well as the recent publication of a series of
facing page S. Maria di Nazareth,
called the Scalzi, begun 1654, interior.
notarial acts which offer more precise dates for the sale and
acquisition of properties on which a number of Longhena’s palaces
were constructed. The happiest occurrence in the five years
between 2006 and 2011 has been the publication of a considerable
number of important studies dedicated to seventeenth-century
Venetian architecture, perhaps the most important of which is the
Album of Giuseppe Pozzo, but also research by Andrea Bacchi,
Martina Frank, Massimo Favilla and Ruggero Rugolo that has
greatly enriched our understanding of the field. Fortunately I have
been able to incorporate their published findings as well as their
personal communications into the revised text alongside my own
continued research into the Venetian Baroque.
vii
 acknowledgements
Numerous friends, colleagues and institutions have contributed to
my research over many years as have my family in Melbourne,
Australia.
My thanks go to the procurators of St Mark’s and staff
members of the following institutions: in Venice, Venetian Civic
Museum and Correr Library, the Marciana National Library, the
State Archives of Venice, the Querini Stampalia Library, the Cini
Foundation, the IUAV and its libraries, and the Palladian Centre
in Vicenza; in Rome, the Australian Embassy (in particular Maria
Carpenzano), the British School at Rome and the Hertziana
Library; in L’Aquila, my colleagues and my department; in
Florence, Villa I Tatti and the Kunsthistorisches Institut; in
Munich, the State Library and the Zentralinstitut für
Kunstgeschichte; in Washington DC, CASVA at the National
Gallery of Art; and in Chicago, the Graham Foundation.
Thanks are also due to Ilaria Abbandandolo, Christine Ashcraft,
Paolo Avarello, Victoria Avery, Andrea Bacchi, Donata Battilotti, Lisa
Beaven and David Marshall, the late Giorgio Bellavitis, Federico
Bellini and Ariane Braga, Guido Beltramini, Barry Bergdoll and
Bill Ryall, Neil Bingham, Richard Bösel and Danilo Spanicciato,
facing page S. Maria Gloriosa dei
Frari, monument to Almerico d’Este
di Modena, 1665, detail.
Giuseppe Bonaccorso, Alessandro Borgomainerio, Debby Bryce,
Massimo Bulgarelli, Duncan Bull, Donatella Calabi, Patrizia
Cavazzini, Matteo Ceriana, Lady Clark, Roberto Cobianchi,
Giancarlo Coccioli, Renata Codello, Ennio Concina, Pierluigi
Congedo, the late David Crellin, Giovanna Crespi, Giovanna
Curcio, Maria Grazia d’Amelio, Sible de Blaauw and Jan Nauta,
Anna Della Valle, Helen Dorey, Roberto Dulio and Andrea Penna,
Marcello Fagiolo and Maria Luisa Madonna, James Fairfax, Johanna
Fassl, Massimo Favilla and Ruggero Rugolo, the late Ornella
Francisci-Osti, Martina Frank, Christoph, Sabine and Adriano
Frommel, Pasquale Gagliardi, Julian and Christa Gardner, Martin
Gaier, Luciana Giacomelli, Marco Guardo and Flavio Fiorucci,
Andrea Guerra, Gianmario Guidarelli, Jasenka Gudelj, Regina
Kaltenbrunner, Peter Kidd, Tim Knox and Todd Longstaffe-Gowan,
Piotr Kransy, Michal Kurzej, Evonne Levy, Douglas Lewis, Maria
Loh, the late Frank McDonald, Börje Magnusson, Marzia
Marandola, Nicoletta Marconi, Fiorentino de Martino, Rick Mather
and David Scrase, Sarah McPhee, Pedro Memmelsdorf and Alfredo
Damanti, Randolph Mickelson, Paola Modesti, Laura Moretti, Silvia
Moretti, Alister Murray, Martin Olin and Anna Bortolozzi, Fulvio,
ix
Dario and Marcello Orsenigo, Nicola Pabis Ticci, Florence and
Jacopo Patrizi, Alina Payne, Maria Pedrocco, Daniele Pergolizzi and
the late Paolo de Silvestri, Mario Piana and Annalisa Bristot,
Margaret Plant, Francesca Prina, Lionello Puppi, Margaret
Richardson, Cristina Riebesell, Augusto Roca de Amicis, Franco
Rosato, Paola Rossi, Susan Russell, Claudia Salmini, Lucia Sardo,
Lorenza, Paolo and Sim Savini, Leon van Schaik and Andrew Keen,
Alessandra Schiavon, Louise Schofield, Richard Schofield, Juergen
Schulz, John Beldon Scott, Elisa Seghezzi, Francesco Sirano and
Luigi Ricci, Susanna, Priscilla and the late Erik Smith, Jörg
Stabenow, Gavin Stamp, Joachim Strupp, Francesco Suomela
Girardi, Tommaso Tagliabue, Francesco di Teodoro, Federica
Tommasi, Patricia Waddy, Volker Welter, Mark Wilson-Jones, Arnold
Witte and Martijn Eickhoff, Karin Wolfe and Tommaso Manfredi,
Bec and Nik Yeo, Vitale Zanchettin and Maddalena Scimemi.
Finally, I am grateful to Alessandra Chemollo, Claudia Conforti,
Francesco dal Co, and Daniela del Pesco who contributed so
much to the making of the Italian edition and also now at Yale
University Press to Sarah Faulks, to the skilful work of the copy
editor, Amanda Kay, and to the proofreader, Jacquie Meredith.
Gillian Malpass encouraged this project from the outset and
Emily Lees designed the book and brought us from manuscript to
press; their infinite patience and enthusiasm has made this English a b b r e v i at i o n s
edition possible.

Archives and Libraries RG Raccolta Gaspari

SDR Senato Deliberazioni Roma
AAC Archivio Antico di Chioggia
STF Senato Terra Filza
AEV Archivio Ellenico, Venezia
STR Senato Terra Registro
APV Archivio Patriarcale di Venezia
ASU Archivio di Stato di Udine
ASV Archivio di Stato di Venezia A r c h i va l a b b r e v i at i o n s
ASZV Archivio di S. Zaccaria, Venezia
b. busta
BCV Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venezia
c. carta
BMV Biblioteca Marciana di Venezia
cap. capitolo
Libri ceremoniali di S. Marco:
f. filza
CSM2 ms. Lat. Cl. iii, 172: anno 1564
fasc. fascicolo
CSM3 ms. It. Cl. vii, 396: anno 1678
fig. figure
CSMD ms. It. Cl. vii, 1639: doge, anno 1590
fol. folio
CC Collegio Ceremoniale
ms. manoscritto
CIJ Consultore in Jure
m.v. more veneto
CNF Collegio Notatorio Filza
proc. processo
CNR Collegio Notatorio Registro
r. registro
DPB Discendenze patrizii Barbaro
tav. tavola
PDS Procuratie di S. Marco de ‘supra’

x xi
Document numbers refer to the Register of Documents,
Appendix 1. All archival documentation was transcribed as found,
and punctuation, spelling and capitalisation are reproduced as
written, although elided letters have been supplied. Words that are
missing due to the state of the documents are indicated by ****.
The presence of wholly indecipherable words are noted by carets
< >, while any decipherable letters within a word are placed
within carets < >. Editorial interpolations are set in square
brackets [ ]. Where the text has only been partially quoted, it is
indicated by three ellipsis points.
Two essential works for the understanding of Venetian
documents are Boerio 1856 and Concina 1988. Also fundamental
are Cicogna 1847, Da Mosto 1939–40, Tiepolo 1994.
xii
D at i n g
Dates in the text have been converted from the Venetian calendar,
which began on 1 March, and given according to standard usage.
Measures
Whenever feet and inches (or piedi and once in the documents)
are referred to, they are Venetian. One Venetian foot equals
0.347735 metres. One Venetian foot comprises 12 once.
INTR oduction
How was it that after more than six centuries of undisputed
recognition as the key visual symbol of the Serenissima, that
triumphal example of medieval urbanism, the L-shaped square of
St Mark’s with its ducal chapel and palace, was displaced as the
iconic representation of Venice, in favour of the newly created
architectural and urbanistic masterpiece of the votive church of
S. Maria della Salute designed by Baldassare Longhena in 1631?
Not even Andrea Palladio’s spectacular churches of S. Giorgio
Maggiore and the Redentore had managed seriously to shift
attention from the governmental heart of the city and yet, by the
time it was completed in 1687, Longhena’s temple, with its
soaring dome and striking scrolls, was decisively adopted by the
burgeoning numbers of European view painters and promoted to
prime architectural icon of the Republic.
Longhena’s masterpiece immediately won over the hearts of
the Venetians for whom it became a national Pantheon already
by mid-century when still incomplete, not only because the
architectural design was daringly original in form – the
enormous dome structurally risky in this city built on
water – but because he broke out of the tradition of facadism
pioneered by Palladio with his white Istrian stone fronts for
churches set across the Bacino of St Mark’s to instead embrace
the Venetian tradition of rich ornamentation here transformed
into a great architectural sculpture in the round that could be
enjoyed from all points of the compass and parts of the city.
This was not just an intellectual exercise in the application of the
orders to a plane, but a daring three-dimensional architectural
composition whose interior series of axes and spatial sequences is
as original as the church’s spectacular exterior profiles. The other
genial decision was the colour choice of white and silver, stone,
painted render and lead-covered domes, that made this pearly
white church seem to hover between sky and sea, embraced by
the Grand and Giudecca Canals where it seems to float anchored
behind the Dogana da Mar. Up close it embraces the tradition of
Jacopo Sansovino and the human figure, that of an architectural
frame endowed with as much sculptural ornamentation as it
could sustain. So too the facade of Cà Pesaro, his palace on the
Grand Canal, now dated to the 1660s and 1670s, exemplifies how
Longhena loaded onto his architectural frameworks an abundance
of additional sculptural ornament to create a wall mass that
xiii
seems ever changing in profile as one moves around the exterior
of his buildings.
Perhaps this is Longhena’s most characteristic contribution, his
particular spatial intelligence, and it is this, rather than style, that
links the works throughout his career. At S. Giorgio Maggiore the
staircase and library begun in the 1640s and the church of the
Scalzi begun in the 1650s are as radically different in style from
each other as they are from the Salute or many of Longhena’s
other works, but what ties them together is how Longhena
responded to each specific commission from his various patrons:
solutions that are both poetic and pragmatic but never
programmatic, something that distinguishes him from Palladio, for
example, and places him squarely in the tradition of his great
sixteenth-century predecessor, Sansovino, as chief architect for the
procurators of St Mark’s. Indeed, one of the consequences of the
uniqueness of his Salute masterpiece, sui generis in every way, was
that, curiously, Longhena was liberated from ever having to repeat,
adapt, transform or cite it, except towards the very end of his life.
Unlike Palladio, whose philology pushed him to repeated attempts
at achieving perfection in his facade compositions, Longhena used
his spatial intelligence to search for new forms for each major
commission, including the much criticised, but little understood,
Ospedaletto facade. This apparent discontinuity has disconcerted
critics who find it easier to trace a linear stylistic development in
an architect’s work, rather than discern why Longhena felt
challenged and compelled to come up with new solutions for
each and every problem.
Indeed, the decisive contribution that Longhena makes to
Baroque architecture is here examined through key works from
his career in the light of historical, historiographical and
theoretical issues in chapter one. His response to erudite monastic
culture in relation to the creation of a series of monumental
staircases and libraries whose theme can be summed up as ‘Gradus
ad Sapientiam’ (climbing to wisdom), presents one aspect of the
wide range of ecclesiastical patronage that filled his career just as
the issues of cult and memory played a key part for his other
churches and the series of tombs for private individuals and the
state, the best of which demonstrate his genius when working
with particular patrons. Longhena’s series of palaces play the
whole range of social standing: from modest and subtle works for
xiv
the discerning but cautious, to the dizzying pyrotechnics of the
Pesaro palace for a newly ducalised family. This was a world away
from his work for minorities such as the Greek and Jewish
communities of Venice, the buildings for poor institutions and his
work for ethnic and religious minorities which were designed in
the latter stages of his career. See chapter six, The Outsider, for
the discussion.
Despite Longhena’s sixty-year career spent working for public
bodies whose archives mostly have survived, there are relatively few
surviving drawings by him, all but one still with the documents
relating to the patron, whether private or institutional, with the
exception of those found in the Gaspari collection in the Correr
Museum of Venice, the private collection of Antonio Gaspari,
Longhena’s most talented collaborator and later independent
architect of considerable importance. Longhena’s drawings pose a
dilemma because the evidence suggests that he did not enjoy this
task and, although his use of graphite for sketches places him
firmly among his contemporaries, in general his presentation
drawings were deeply indebted to the late sixteenth century and it
seems that as soon as he was able to, he hired other talented
architects, such as Gaspari, to execute his important presentation
drawings, thus dramatically distinguishing himself from Palladio,
Bernini, and especially Borromini, who took pleasure and revealed
their genius in drawing. The whole thorny issue of Longhena’s
drawings and those of Gaspari could only be solved by an
exhibition dedicated to the architecture of Venice in the Age of
the Baroque that concentrated on the architectural drawings of
Longhena, Gaspari, Giuseppe Pozzo and others. What these would
reveal is how much architects in seventeenth-century Venice were
dedicated not only to creating spatial luxuries for domestic elites,
but, in Longhena’s case, also to producing dignified spatial solutions
for poor and ethnic communities with whom Longhena felt an
affinity. Then, when called to the task of creating both symbolic
and resonating architecture for the state, Longhena demonstrated
an extraordinary ability to produce a monumental architectural and
urban spatial composition that resonates with eidetic moments,
thus creating an intimate immensity that alludes to a grand
historical tradition but equally gives a sense of temporary
architecture having landed in this watery city to take up a
permanent position in the symbolic urban landscape of Venice.
facing page Widmann palace at
S. Canciano, rio renovations and
facade begun after 1637.

1 S. Maria di Nazareth, called the
Scalzi, begun 1654, interior towards
entrance.
1
Venetian Baroque
Antonio, ‘I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano – A stage, where every man must play a part’
(William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, i, i, 77–8).
At exactly mid-career, in 1654, Baldassare Longhena (1597/98–
1682) designed in a pioneering romanising mode with richly
coloured marbles the church interior of S. Maria di Nazareth for
the Barefoot Carmelites in Venice (fig. 1).1 One of his autograph
presentation drawings documents his intentions for an
extraordinary quasi-Greek-cross plan enclosed by four smaller
flanking chapels and succeeded by a presbytery and choir
separated by the octagonal high altar alla romana composed of
equally sumptuous marbles (fig. 2). To ensure the legibility of his
spatial concept for the interior, here Longhena renounced his
preference for projecting columns and semi-columns and, as
recorded in his longitudinal elevation, instead employed pilasters,
revetted in variegated purple marble topped by gilded capitals
(fig. 3).2 His free-standing high altar was executed in modified
form in the 1670s (fig. 4). Later it was enclosed within the altar
screen by Giuseppe Pozzo just after the turn of the century (see
fig. 143) and in 1715 the nave vault was adorned with the fresco
by Giambattista Tiepolo of the Flight of the Holy House of Loreto
until it was destroyed by an Austrian bomb in 1915 (see figs
157–8). The innovative design of this vault united under it the
nave and the major and minor ancillary spaces and also created a
longitudinal axial focus for the spectator on the more brightly lit
sanctuary space containing the high altar (fig. 2). By deliberately
renouncing a dome, Longhena designed a pioneering church
interior that was without precedent on the Italian peninsula in
1654 and the scenographic architecture he designed here and at S.
Maria della Salute in 1630, in particular the urban scenography of
the latter, established one of the key concepts of the mature
Baroque, that of landmark architecture and architecture as urban
scenery that finds its descendants in the Sydney Opera House and
the Guggenheim Museum at Bilbao.
Longhena’s presentation plan was developed in discussion with
his patrons, the Barefoot Carmelites in Venice. It was then sent to
Rome for examination by the superiors of the Mother House as
indicated by the express approval written onto it and the lateral
enlargement requested, as suggested by the additional ink lines
extending beyond the original perimeter walls. The plan
demonstrates both Longhena’s and the Carmelite’s familiarity with
recent developments in church planning for the new orders, having
affinities with the plan by Giovanni Ambrogio Magenta for the
1
left 2 Baldassare Longhena with
additions by Giuseppe Pozzo,
S. Maria di Nazareth, ground plan,
1654, pen, ink, graphite on paper,
600 × 344 mm (Milan, Archive of the
Carmelite Provincial Curia, fol. 94).
above 3 Baldassare Longhena with
additions by Antonio Gaspari,
S. Maria di Nazareth, longitudinal
section, post-1654, pen, ink, graphite
and wash on paper, 475 × 1120 mm
(BCV RG I 37).
right 4 S. Maria di Nazareth,
tabernacle alla romana, 1660s,
enclosed within altarscreen by
Giuseppe Pozzo c.1700.

5 Cosimo Fanzago, Carmelite
church of S. Giuseppe delle Scalze a
Ponte Corvo, Naples, ground plan,
detail, 1643, pen, ink and wash on
paper (Naples, Archivio di Stato,
fasc. 5672).
4 5
Barnabite church of S. Salvatore in Bologna of 1605, with the plan
by Cosimo Fanzago of 1643 for the Carmelite church of S.
Giuseppe delle Scalze a Ponte Corvo at Naples (fig. 5), and with
the plan of S. Francesco di Paola of 1650 in Rome (see fig. 156).3
Not only was the Neapolitan church built for the same order, but
Fanzago, who had been in Venice in 1629 and possibly met
Longhena, used a lozenge shape in his plan based on two
equilateral triangles abutting one another to form the cardinal
points of the entrance, sanctuary and the two larger chapels. The
perimeter of the lozenge records the widest trajectory of the
spectator’s vision out to these chapels while the axis that bisects it
leads directly to the high altar. The same axes could be drawn
onto Longhena’s Scalzi plan, and his original conception of the
interior indicates similar aims. The Carmelites subsequently moved
away from several innovative aspects of his plan, such as the
proposed interpenetration of the large chapels and the nave as a
cross-shaped space on one level, and as built all the chapels have
balustrades and three steps preceding them, establishing greater
separation from the nave by reverting to the arrangement found in
Il Redentore by Andrea Palladio begun in 1577 (see figs 80, 153).
Further evidence of Longhena’s awareness of recent
developments in church planning for the new orders is revealed
by the placement of confessionals in the tall pedestal bases that
flank the larger chapels on either side of the nave. These may
have been incorporated into the design at the specific request of
members of the order, but it also seems plausible that Longhena
suggested them, as he probably knew of Milanese examples as
well as the Jesuit church of S. Lucia in Bologna by Girolamo
Rainaldi, the design of which was approved by the order in
February 1623 and provisionally completed by 1659 (fig. 6).4
Longhena’s elevation drawing post-dates the plan of 1654 because
it depicts specific details not represented there, but which do
appear in the church as built, such as the sets of three stairs
before each of the chapels.5 The use of pencil rather than ink for
a few details such as the arch separating the nave and presbytery
reveals Longhena’s exploration of various ways to achieve
continuity through the repetition of alternating smaller and larger
thermal windows along the longitudinal axis. This was also his
means of focusing attention on the areas of highest prestige such
as the large chapels and the high altar, the latter being more
brightly lit as there is less distance between the two flanking
thermal windows (see fig. 143). Unlike the high altar for S. Maria
della Salute, which was to be lit principally by a contra jour effect,
here Longhena intended to illuminate evenly from both sides the
large and imposing high altar designed in the form of a
tabernacle alla romana as shown in the 1654 plan. The plan also
records Pozzo’s subsequent intervention to enclose this tabernacle
in an elaborate altar screen, and to position an organ over the
entrance wall of the church, just as Longhena’s elevation includes
Gaspari’s sketching onto it of the possible alterations to the S.
Teresa altar, in which a copy of the celebrated sculptural ensemble
by Gianlorenzo Bernini would be installed in the 1690s, the work
of Heinrich Meyring (see fig. 161).6 Pozzo’s elaborate altar gives
the sanctuary an increased visual anchorage and pre-eminence it
would otherwise not have, but it is Longhena’s innovative vault,
together with the absence of a crossing and cupola, that unites the
entire interior space in a way that focuses attention in an
unprecedented manner on the high altar.7
Longhena’s innovations on recent Italian church design parallels
features of other pioneering buildings of the period such as
S. Maria in Campitelli in Rome of the mid-1650s by Carlo
Rainaldi, and here the entire interior is fully revetted in coloured
marble – one of the first of its kind in Italy.8 In 1665, just over
ten years after the Scalzi project was begun, Longhena’s design for
the exuberant mausoleum of Doge Giovanni Pesaro in the church
of S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice (fig. 7) also anticipates the
mausoleum by Bernini to Alexander VII Chigi in St Peter’s of
1671 (see fig. 46) and demonstrates how close the two architects’
research was at this time.9 The architectural framework of the
Pesaro monument occupies an entire bay of the church, and the
enormous white and black marble moors support the massive
Doric entablature and flank bronze skeletons holding inscriptions
devised by Cristoforo Ivanovich in collaboration with Emmanuel
Tesauro. Over the doorway appears a theatre of death with the
defunct enthroned aloft his sarcophagus borne by dragons and
flanked by numerous allegorical figures including Genius (Ingegno).
It emblematises Longhena’s creation of this magnificent
combination of colours and materials, executed by the trusted
équipe of the creator of the Venetian Baroque, headed by his
long-time collaborator, Giusto Le Court, of whom Quintiliano
Rezzonico wrote in 1679: ‘the most beautiful and important
things in Venice are his work’ (see figs 44–5).10
The programme for the Pesaro ensemble, one of the principal
architectural sculptural complexes of the second half of the
century, was devised by Tesauro, the renowned author of the
Cannocchiale Aristotelico first published in 1654 in collaboration
with Ivanovich, from 1681 a canon of St Mark’s whose erudition
was noted by his contemporaries.11 From 1657 Ivanovich was
secretary to Doge Giovanni’s brother Leonardo, for whom 6 Girolamo Rainaldi, S. Lucia,
Longhena executed the celebrated Grand Canal portion of the Bologna, after 1623, interior with
detail of the spaces for the
family palace in the 1660s. For Leonardo, Ivanovich composed the confessionals within the pedestals of
elegy to his elder brother (Elogio a doge Pesaro) which was the nave.
commissioned by the family in 1658, as well as the 1683 eulogy to
his friend Leonardo. Ivanovich’s manuscript of 1688, entitled
History in Marbles, or the Glorious Records of Giovanni Pesaro, cites
the Jesuit-educated patrician from Turin in the list of authorities
he was indebted to for the composition of the Pesaro inscriptions,
and specifically acknowledges his debt to Tesauro’s Inscriptiones for
the first idea, or overall concept for the mausoleum, to surround
the seated doge with emblems and symbolic trophies.12 Executed
between late August 1665, when Leonardo obtained permission
from the Franciscans at the Frari, and 1669, when the monument
was inscribed, the work was to be a history depicted in marbles,
directly invoking part of Tesauro’s own formulation of ingenious
acuteness in his Cannocchiale, described as the richest possible
treasure house for the study of seventeenth-century wit: ‘the
marbles will speak and they will form the present memorial as
symbols of Eternity to a Prince’ and further, ‘mute things speak,
lifeless things live, the dead reawake; the tombs, the marbles, the
statues, from this siren of souls they receive voice, spirit and
movement, with genial spirits ingeniously discoursing’.13
The inscription on the keystone of the central arch sums up
the entire monument, ‘Stabunt spirantia signa’ (fig. 8 and see
fig. 281), paraphrased by Ivanovich in his manuscript, ‘With this
one can infer that all that is precious and important appears in
this august monument, everything signifies, everything alludes, and
everything speaks’, and indeed the sculptural figures that create
this Baroque drama all refer to Pesaro’s achievements, here staged
in an unprecedentedly theatrical manner because, as Ivanovich
noted, Leonardo Pesaro understood that, ‘ordinary forms don’t
satisfy more than initial curiosity; whereas an animated and
moving invention strikes observing minds much more’.14
This conception of artistic creation exemplifies the Baroque age
in which artists consciously employed rhetorical techniques,
methods and devices, and were particularly concerned to find
ways of inducing specific effects in viewers, spectators and
audiences.15 Artists of the period believed that art should appeal
to both the rational and irrational faculties, and that artistic
devices should try to move the emotions or passions that were to
be found in the second part of soul. Therefore art was understood
as being both a delight and instructive, and art of
all kinds was increasingly created in such a way that it would
manipulate the passions and appetites of the second soul, top 8 Mausoleum of Doge
Giovanni Pesaro, 1665–9, detail of
encouraging the spectator to believe in the perception of their moors and entablature.
senses, for which reason art became more sensual. This increasing
emphasis on human passions is often noted as constituting the bottom 9 Amedeo di
facing page 7 Mausoleum of Doge Castellamonte, Two of the four
difference between the Renaissance and Baroque, the latter fusing Giovanni Pesaro, S. Maria Gloriosa Moors, engraving (from di
the arts by way of the bel composto to achieve a unified drama. dei Frari, 1665–9. Castellamonte 1674).

7
 The high-level collaboration between Longhena, Leonardo
Pesaro, Tesauro and Ivanovich is encapsulated in the creation of
the dextrous epigraphical displays inscribed on the white marble
sheets held aloft by bronze skeletons. These are both grave yet
witty, a mode first pioneered by Justus Lipsius, in which each line
must have the force of an epigram and the overall inscription
display ingeniousness.16 The immediate appeal and influence of
Longhena’s design for the Pesaro monument was made apparent
when one of his regular équipe of sculptors, Bernardo Falconi,
briefly returned in 1665 to Venice from Turin to collect his family
before returning to the Savoyard capital where, two years later in
1667 he was documented executing bronze moors to be placed
before the facade of Venaria Reale by Amedeo di Castellamonte
(now destroyed, fig. 9). This commission from Charles Emmanuel
II surely stemmed from Falconi’s own suggestion and found a
favourable ducal ear.17
These two key works in Longhena’s oeuvre situate him firmly
among the pioneers of mid-seventeenth-century Italian
architectural and sculptural design, and establish convincing
moments of rapprochment between Venetian and Roman Baroque
design and aesthetics in these decades. Yet, despite the innovative
nature of Longhena’s Scalzi and his Pesaro monument, neither of
them has ever been illustrated or discussed at length in any
account of Italian Baroque architecture, thereby relegating to the
footnotes or oblivion two key works by the principal protagonist
of seventeenth-century Venice that would ensure his inclusion
among the most progressive architects of the period. Instead,
critics have preferred to focus on his spectacular early work of
S. Maria della Salute, designed in 1631, because it enables the
establishment of difference between the Roman and Venetian
Baroque (fig. 10). The church of the Salute, then, is succeeded by
accounts of the monastic staircase and library of S. Giorgio
Maggiore of the 1640s (see figs 109–11) and the facade of the
Pesaro palace of the 1670s (see fig. 266), to support the thesis of a
dominant monochrome aesthetic in seventeenth-century Venice
where facades of crystalline Istrian stone line the Grand Canal
and austere whitewashed monastic interiors were the norm. This
is only partially correct and finds its counterpart in the Scalzi
interior as well as the interiors of numerous seventeenth-century
palaces including Longhena’s own Pesaro palace with its ornate 11 Baldassare Longhena, S. Maria
wooden ceiling on the first floor (see fig. 278), and – influenced della Salute, revised ground plan of
project, ante March 1632, pen, brown
by his work at the Scalzi – the gilded stucco and canvas ink and blue wash on paper,
decorations intended by Longhena in the 1650s for the interior of 710 × 440 mm (Rome, Archive of the
the dome of the Salute (fig. 12).18 Congregation of the Oratory of
facing page 10 S. Maria della S. Filippo Neri at S. Maria in
This problem of interpretation has developed principally Salute, begun 1631, consecrated Vallicella, Rome, Cartella 2, VIII,
because Longhena’s Salute, as a work sui generis, has overshadowed 1687. disegno 170).

9
all else and is too often perceived as defining the entire Venetian Regarding the architects, I have made a request for information, are the most beautiful churches in Rome. Your Serenity could
Baroque, rather than being considered a work designed at the very and in my first dispatch I will collect in depth the conditions order whatever takes his fancy, also by way of writing to an
outset of the period that witnessed its greatest creations. of them all, and if your Excellency should desire designs or architect to have designs made, if you should so wish to request
Consequently, the interior of the Salute has been misinterpreted models of many beautiful churches that are in this city one something.26
because it is compared with the subsequent shift to rich colourism could get hold of them as Michelangelo in particular left many
and the taste for the ornate in Roman architecture of the 1660s, good works.22 Pesaro’s acute identification of the innovative nature of Jesuit
rather than with the more monochrome works conceived in the architectural design is particularly telling, but such a church design
These issues become clearer in the memorandum written by would not have been acceptable in Venice politically, or feasible
1630s by Francesco Borromini and Pietro da Cortona at S. Carlo
some Roman architects and enclosed in the dispatch of 23 structurally for that matter.27 If Pesaro did indeed send printed
alle Quattro Fontane and SS Luca and Martina.19
November 1630: plans to the doge, perhaps one of these was the engraved plan
To understand better the significance of Longhena’s church of
the Salute one must examine the exact conditions in which the As his Excellency Ambassador Pesaro asked some experts in and elevations by Antonio Labacco of the design by Antonio da
design competition was held in late 1630. Following the request Rome to prepare a design, in order to be able to respond Sangallo the Younger for S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini (see fig. 99)?
to the senate by the three patricians selected to oversee the better to the wishes of the Most Serene Republic, your And if Longhena knew Pesaro personally by then, as has been
commission of the new votive church (in the documents ‘deputati’ intentions and theirs would be better set out as they hope to recently suggested, might Pesaro not have written about or even
and referred to here as commissioners) in early November to know first, if the site has been chosen, and its description; or sent such plans also to Longhena?28 In any case, all the architects
search in Rome and elsewhere for possible architects, responses rather if this is free, or to be chosen to fit the design. Second, mentioned were born in the 1580s and represent the older
were received from various quarters including that of late if it must have the form of a Temple or a Basilica or if in this generation, whereas the winner of the competition was a much
December from Marc’Antonio Padavin, resident in Florence, matter they leave the choice to the experts. Third, if it must be younger Venetian.
asking after particulars of the church, administered by regular clergy, or by secular chaplains; in the When Longhena came to design his winning project for
first case the Church must have an adjoining cloister, in the S. Maria della Salute in late 1630, his original project, as known
I have tried to find out about architects [ . . . ] and sculptors at through documents and drawings, was the most innovative and
second it can be isolated like the Cathedral of Milan, Santa
the same time, of the first profession one Gherardo Silvani has pioneering to be presented in Venice in fifty years (fig. 11). In the
Maria del Fiore in Florence, the Cathedral of the city of
been highly recommended as he is responsible for all the most half century it took to build, the Salute rose slowly but
Burgos in Old Castile, Our Lady at Antwerp, the Vatican, and
important churches and residences of the city and beyond and majestically, forever altering the urban landscape of the city. This
others similar. Fourth, if with columns, or with pilasters, and in
is universally praised.20 financially extravagant and architecturally exuberant state
the first case, up to what size could be transported to Venice, so
The nomination of the Florentine Gherardo Silvani, by then fifty as to avoid the difficulties that the Milanese have at present in monument was no doubt intended as a response to the great
years of age, suggests that it was predominantly the older executing the design made by Pellegrino for the facade of their artistic commissions emanating from the papal court of Urban VIII
generation of architects that was well known around 1630, cathedral, that they cannot finish because they cannot find Barberini. The enormous sums required meant that construction of
something confirmed by the responses received from Giovanni columns of that scale.23 the Salute dragged on from 1631 until 1687, making it the major
Pesaro, Longhena’s future patron and then ambassador to Rome, building project of seventeenth-century Venice.
The architects’ request about officiating the church highlights The main concept or conceit (concetto) was a monumental
whose correspondence provides a much clearer insight into the
that fact that, unusually, the doge and senate had not assigned it centralised church with a rotunda surmounted by an enormous
situation in 1630. Pesaro’s letters reveal the senate’s desire to obtain
to a religious order, as was normally done when a building was dome that dominated the city and provided a spectacular
the best artists as he had been instructed to seek Bernini’s services
commissioned, presumably to avoid the problems encountered at destination for the annual procession decreed in the original vow
for the sculpture of the Virgin that was to adorn the high altar.
the Redentore where the Capuchins had complained about the (fig. 13). In April 1631 Longhena presented his idea by way of a
Pesaro replied in February 1631 that he had made contact but
luxuriousness of the state-financed church.24 By way of a preface conceit, just as Bernini would thirty years later when describing
believed his request would not succeed, an opinion he confirmed
to this request, in his dispatch Pesaro, as if to emphasise the the colonnade of St Peter’s Square as the motherly arms of the
in early May 1631.21
architects’ questions, also mentioned the new Jesuit church of S. church embracing the faithful:
That Bernini was sought after as a sculptor, rather than as an
Ignazio, begun in 1626 to the designs of the architect Orazio
architect, reiterates the fact that the competition was held before This church, having the mystery of its dedication, being
Grassi, possibly in collaboration with the painter Domenichino
Bernini, Borromini or Cortona had designed any of their major dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, made me think, with what
and others.25 He wrote:
architectural works. The Venetians were therefore looking towards little talent God has bestowed on me, of building the church in
older architects and church designs of the late sixteenth century I am sending to Your Excellencies some printed designs of the the form of a rotunda, being in the shape of a crown, since it
onwards, as is made clear by Pesaro in two dispatches written on most important plans that can be found, and a design done in is dedicated to the Virgin.29 above 12 Longhena workshop, with
16 and 23 November 1630 that focused on a group of Roman pen of the church that Cardinal Ludovisi is building for the autograph inscription, Cupola per la
salutte per far pitura, post-1650, pen,
architects who wanted to submit designs. In the first letter of 16 Jesuits, which he claims removes all the errors that are in the Longhena’s recourse to a specific concept as a controlling idea has pencil and wash on paper, 850 ×
November he noted: first church of the Jesuits and in that of the Theatines, which a subsequent parallel in the conceits, emblems, inscriptions and 400 mm (BCV RG I 9).

10 11
 epigrams used for his Pesaro monument. This way of thinking also
characterises the proposal submitted by the painter Alessandro
Varotari, called Il Padovanino, whose project consisted of two
superimposed equilateral triangles and three circles appended to
the points of one of the triangles (fig. 14). As Il Padovanino
explained to the senate in his memorandum:

I, Alessandro Varotari your most devoted subject and citizen

[present] the image of a new temple, original and not
unworthy perhaps of the piety, and the greatness of this
Christian Republic [ . . . ] In order to be distinguished from
ordinary forms such as the perfectly circular, the rectangular,
the oval, the square [ . . . ] I decided to turn to the triangular,
or rather to the double triangle, upon which I based the entire
design of this church [ . . . ] Having said that I had as a base
the triangle, it is because I directed all the things to this Trinity,
and constituting it in a way that has a certain and evident
propagation of one triangle with the other, for there are three
chapels, three doors and atria, there are three [pipe] organs, and
three eyes in the sides above the hexagon.30

Il Padovanino’s propagation of two triangles is the conceptual

13 S. Maria della Salute, rotunda
towards the high altar.
equivalent of Fanzago’s geometry for the Scalzi in Naples, and
perhaps recourse to a conceit will eventually explicate the
emblematic or even hieroglyphic form of Longhena’s volutes,
possibly as seashells or as great waves breaking forth from the
huge shell-like form of the dome (see fig. 68).31
The volutes exemplify the novelty that Longhena sought in
order to win the competition, something he stressed positively
regarding his own design and negatively regarding that of Fracao,
actually one Antonio (quondam Francesco) Smeraldi called Fracao,
who was ‘poor in invention’ (fig. 15).32 Novelty was also a
controlling factor in Il Padovanino’s design yet, as has been noted
recently, much seventeenth-century art was deliberately moderated
by the presence of recognisably traditional forms, whether by Il
Padovanino who painted like Titian, or in this case by Longhena
who employed Palladian architectural forms.33 The deliberate
citation of familiar forms by Longhena surely was aimed at
persuading his potential patrons of the desirability and feasibility
of his design by presenting reassuring elements that distracted
attention from the potentially negative perceptions of this rather
daring, even risky structure in his otherwise novel proposal.
Conjuring up a whole gamut of architectural forms from the
recent and more distant Venetian past also enabled Longhena to
clearly express his patriotism. More subtly, the ecumenical citation
in one of his memoranda of S. Giorgio Maggiore and the
Pantheon, one Venetian and one Roman example, was probably
aimed at appealing to the widest range of senators. The choice of
local architectural vocabulary referring to Venetian rather than
other traditions has its origins in the competition to design a
national monument which would express well the senate’s wish
for a strategic, rhetorical response through a prominent votive
temple that proclaimed Venice’s strength. Thus Longhena’s design
was perfectly calibrated as its huge dome gives prominence and its
scrolls flamboyance, while its careful citations celebrate the place
and state of the Republic. To cite just one example, the arch of
the main doorway of the Salute is semi-octagonal in section as in
the arch of the sixteenth-century main entrance of the Scuola
Grande of S. Rocco, Longhena thereby deliberately redeploying
an architectural element from the principal entrance to a building
specifically linked to ceremonial activity in Venice.34 That the new
church was conceived by all parties as a patriotic statement seems
confirmed by the polemical and nationalistic sculptural
programme presented in 1644 in the Soteria of the Somascan
14 Alessandro Varotari, called
Il Padovanino, project proposal for
S. Maria della Salute, June 1631, pen
and ink on paper, 20 × 30 mm (ASV
CIJ, reg. 410).

13

15 S. Maria della Salute, drum and
volutes.
Lorenzo Longo, composed with the help of Francesco Lazzaroni,
theological canon of the Patriarch of Venice, and represented in
the engraving of the same year by Marco Boschini (see fig. 70).35
Boschini records the procession of the doge and signoria into
the church and, based on Longhena’s original wooden model,
captures his novel conception for a scenographic interior (fig. 16).
Being, among other things, a stage designer, Boschini used
perspectival conventions to depict the interior recession through
the series of arches, but these might easily be confounded with
the specific perspectival effects created by the series of arches of
diminishing size found in the courtyard perspective of the Spada
palace in Rome, dating from 1641.36 Instead, throughout the
Salute the arches are the same size so that the perspectival effect
is instead comparable to that found in the aisles of the church of
S. Spirito in Florence by Filippo Brunelleschi. Had the original
proposal not been altered by the placement of the organ in the
windows of the choir, ascending the stairs of the Salute for the
feast day procession would have brought into view, even from the
landing before the main entrance, the free-standing high altar
silhouetted dramatically by light entering from the rear and seen
through the series of arches (fig. 18). But Longhena went much
further than this in his design and, following the departure from
the orthogonal placement of axes by Vincenzo Scamozzi at his
Villa Rocca Pisani, through the complex geometries of the
unusual plan he devised a comparable system of non-orthogonal
axes for the interior of the Salute that create a series of
unexpected visual experiences quite different from those of
Palladio who used an orthogonal matrix. Just as Scamozzi adjusted
the central intercolumniation of the portico of the Rocca Pisani
so that the edges of the columns could be seen from the circular
hall, suggesting from the interior the presence of a formal space
outside, Longhena deliberately devised a slightly narrower
principal entrance to restrict the view from the front stairs into
the church.37
The novel, theatrical nature of Longhena’s interior is captured
in drawings executed in the 1650s by the architect David Klöcker
Ehrenstrahl (figs 17, 19–20). The high altar, here with an invented
ciborium, is sited at the end of the series of arches that constitute
part of the complex interior elevation with piers that restrict the 16 Marco Boschini, Il doge Nicolò
view into the ambulatory and the main space of the rotunda, but Contarini in visita processionale alla
from the rotunda create visual axes that open up outwards to the chiesa di S. Maria della Salute, detail
of the rotunda, presbytery and high
chapels. Ehrenstrahl’s third drawing conveys well the impression of altar, 1644, engraving and etching,
the equally spectacular view to be had through to the entrance two sheets each of c.375 × 714 mm,
from the high altar, the latter being the vital visual anchor at this here detail of lower sheet
(Copenhagen, Den Kongelige
point of the interior scenography, located as it is between the Kobberstiksamling, Statens Museum
sanctuary and choir (fig. 20).38 for Kunst, Portfolio 410-A, 20–1).
15
above 17 David Klöcker
Ehrenstrahl, view towards the south
of the interior of S. Maria della
Salute based on the original model,
1655–6, pen and wash on paper, facing page 18 S. Maria della
410 × 530 mm (Sandemar, Sweden; Salute, high altar in collaboration
photo courtesy of Juergen Schulz). with Giusto Le Court, 1670.
19 David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl, view
of the ambulatory and pillars of S.
Maria della Salute, 1655–6, pen and
wash on paper, 405 × 540 mm
(Sandemar, Sweden; photo courtesy
of Juergen Schulz).

20 David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl, view

from the presbytery towards the
main entrance of S. Maria della
Salute in 1655–6, pen and wash on
paper, 370 × 520 mm (Sandemar, 21 S. Maria della Salute,
Sweden; photo courtesy of Juergen S. Giorgio Maggiore and the Bacino
Schulz). of St Mark’s seen from the east.
 The aesthetic intent for the monochrome interior of the Salute
remains largely that of 1630, whereas the exterior was modified
by Longhena significantly around 1661 (as a consequence of his
revised sanctuary plan of 1631), from the original proposal for
an inconspicuous dome over the sanctuary, to a much more
prominent one by raising its height through the addition of two
large apsidal vaults enclosed in a drum (see fig. 82). Rather than a
single, dominating dome in the Renaissance tradition, Longhena
created a new exterior aesthetic by coupling and overlaying
the largely static profile of the main dome through its close
conjunction with the minor one and flanking twin bell towers,
whose profiles change and overlap with one another as one moves
across the Bacino (the celebrated basin of water in front of
St Mark’s Square and the ducal palace). This was a carefully
calculated aesthetic change that could only have been conceived
by someone with a profound understanding of the Venetian
cityscape (fig. 21).39
The importance of the visibility of the new church, which
Longhena’s design so well fulfilled, was set out by the
Commissioners in their memorandum of June 1631:
The Most Excellent Senate decided to build the new church of
the Madonna della Salute according to the model in the form
of a rotunda as being more noble and of greater dignity [ . . . ]
but to be really successful, as the Most Excellent Senate would
like, it would be better to build this temple in the form of a
rotunda in an open site, visible and with much space about it,
that it would not have on the site of the Trinità where it
would remain oppressed and obfuscated [ . . . ] the Most
Excellent Senate is called upon to change the site to that
which could not be more appropriate, or more noble, or more
conspicuous than that of the Punta della Dogana, that seems
purpose-made to build there a great temple as His Serenity
now wishes to do, which would bring great ornament and
dignity to the whole city, and would make an amazing view.40
This emphasis on visibility logically followed the senators’ choice
of the Trinità site which placed the new church, to be visited
each year in procession, in the centre of a circle encompassing
Palladio’s S. Giorgio Maggiore (1565–1612) and the Redentore
(1576–92), both churches hosting annual processions and both
with white stone facades which had already established
scenographic effects across the Bacino, as had the Zitelle (see figs
80–1, 153).41 Longhena’s addition at once radically augmented this
scenographic reading of the Bacino, but the seemingly continuous
proliferation of Palladian churches there in the second half of
the sixteenth century is in great contrast to the first half of the
20
seventeenth century when Longhena’s Salute was the only
significant new architectural commission, a fact which has led to
historiographical difficulties in identifying and understanding the
Venetian Baroque.
This problem of interpretation has arisen because of the
different historical situation that pertained to Venice during the
seventeenth century with respect to other Italian centres. For
example, the tragedy of the 1630 plague that devastated the city
hardly affected Rome.42 In Venice and the Veneto, where over a
third of the population perished, there was widespread social and
economic collapse.43 Venice was already in a much weakened
position before this plague as a third of the population had died
during that of 1576 and, although the economy had slowly
recovered, political difficulties continued to beset the government,
notably the Interdict by Paul V Borghese in 1605–6, followed by
the 1616–18 war with Austria which coincided with the
beginning of the Thirty Years War.44 There were also major
internal governmental problems such as the Reform of the
Council of Ten in 1628 which contributed to the Venetians’ own
sense of their being in crisis. The plague of 1630 terminated what
can be identified as the first in a tripartite division of distinctly
different periods of architectural patronage in the seventeenth
century in Venice, in which the long Renaissance concluded in
1630 was followed by an almost complete absence of significant
patronage between 1630 and the 1650s, with few obvious
exceptions, and then beginning around mid-century, in the wake
of the admission of the new nobles by payment (the Aggregati)
from 1646 onwards, a renewed impetus in building. However, the
outset of this period was accompanied by significant setbacks such
as the war of Candia 1646–9 that culminated in the loss of the
island of Crete, Venice’s last colony.45
With the exception of S. Maria della Salute, which took fifty
years to build and used all available state funding – although it
also became a symbol of hope among the ruins of the Venetian
economy – virtually no significant new public building was
undertaken until the 1640s, so that the twenty-year period that
coincided with the creation of the Roman Baroque was
essentially a period of inactivity in Venice. The major commission
in the 1640s of the staircase and library at S. Giorgio Maggiore
also went to Longhena, who therefore did not enjoy a continuous
stimulus from a vibrant local architectural milieu, but rather
worked in isolation. His major commissions at the Scalzi, and the
Bon and Pesaro palaces thus appear episodic rather than the result
of dialogue with, and response to, his local contemporaries, none
of whom had effectively worked at his level.46 And yet, the fact
that the question of the Venetian Baroque can be posed at all is
testament to the triumph of the Venetian senate working with
Baldassare Longhena to create and construct a joint architectural
rhetoric, often considered one of the key components of the
Baroque, which was triumphally expressed through the church of
S. Maria della Salute understood as a declaration of the
continuing power and vitality of the Most Serene Republic.
Rome in the 1630s, by comparison, witnessed the vibrant
pontificate of Urban VIII at the height of his powers, and
widespread construction throughout the city commissioned by
religious orders such as the Trinitarians building their church of
S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, and Roman families commissioning
numerous talented architects to design their palaces.47 The
seemingly endless opportunities for patronage produced an
exciting rivalry among architects there that spurred them on to
increasingly virtuoso productions. The rivalry between Bernini,
Borromini and Cortona in the third and fourth decades of the
century activated a culture of continuous philological research
into new architectural forms.
Unlike the extravagance of successive popes who were often in
a hurry to commission monuments that would ensure their
prominence in life and remembrance in death, and which
generated so much of the intense artistic creativity of the period
in Rome, the governmental bodies that commissioned work in
Venice were characterised by opposing values such as caution and
patience, so much so that Longhena re-presented in 1669 for
consideration to the procurators a ground plan for the Beccaria
(meat market) of St Mark’s that he had first drawn up for them
in 1638.48 So too, state tomb monuments were by their very
nature conservative, as they commemorated the dead, and this is
confirmed by the senate’s preference for the more traditional of
two proposals put forward by Longhena in 1629 for the cenotaph
in S. Stefano for the military commander, Bartolomeo d’Alviano
(figs 22–3). Alviano would be represented life-size, in full military
dress, rather than merely as a portrait bust.
Conservatism pertained particularly to the patronage of the
procurators of St Mark’s ‘de supra’ (responsible for administering
the ducal chapel of St Mark’s), for whom Longhena worked from
1638 when he was appointed assistant to the then proto (chief
architect) Marco della Carità, and from 1640 as their proto, a post
he held for over forty years until 1682, retiring just a month before
his death on 18 February 1682.49 During this time Longhena
oversaw the task of completing the monumental architecture of the
Procuratie Nuove and Nuovissime, inheriting Scamozzi’s project, as
modified c.1600 by the then Proto Francesco di Bernardin, who 22 Baldassare Longhena, variant of 23 Baldassare Longhena, variant of
two proposals for the Alviano two proposals for the Alviano
had greatly simplified the design of the internal courtyards, monument in S. Stefano, 1629, detail monument in S. Stefano, 1629, detail
stripping them of their internal architectural orders. Longhena (ASV STF 365). (ASV STF 365).
21
right 24 Procuratie Nuove in St
Mark’s Square, interior of colonnade.

facing page 25 Procuratie Nuove

in St Mark’s Square, portion
executed by Longhena after 1640.

top 26 Girolamo Soardi, ground
plan of the area of the Procuratie
Nuove, Beccaria and Casaria,
eighteenth century
(BCV St. Gherro 192).
middle 27 Procuratie Nuovissime,
ground-level shops on the Casaria
facing S. Maria dell’Ascensione,
c.1660.
bottom 28 Procuratie Nuove,
pilasters and rusticated column in
westernmost courtyard, c.1660.
24
continued the facade overlooking the piazza with the less elaborate
revetment that avoided Scamozzi’s Michelangelesque sculptural
elaboration over the windows of the second main floor in favour
of a more austere design (figs 24–5).
The public proto system that Longhena dominated from 1640
to 1682 resulted in him receiving automatically almost all the
most important commissions, thereby stifling innovation and any
possible culture of continuous research into new forms, especially
in the absence of any exceptional patron, such as Doge Andrea
Gritti, who had instigated the renewal of St Mark’s Square by
Jacopo Sansovino.50 Much of Longhena’s job was administrative,
and neither he nor his institutional patrons sought innovation as
the overriding element in the work undertaken for them. Some
idea of the immense array of mundane tasks helps to explain this
situation: as proto for the church of the Salute, eventually
Longhena was made responsible also for maintenance work at the
Redentore, when both votive churches were placed under the
administration of the same commissioners.51 He also undertook
endless work for the successive primates (primiceri) of St Mark’s
as shown in the thousands of payments recorded in the registers
of the ‘Giornali Cassier’ for one-time services, either to employees
or outsiders, for work undertaken by them under Longhena’s
detailed supervision.52 One example must suffice: on 31 October
1659, the painter Pietro della Vecchia was paid for work entrusted
to him by Longhena to systematise the painting by Paolo Veronese
in the ceiling of the Marciana Library.53
In the 1660s, to bring to completion the last portion of the
Procuratie Nuove to the south-west of the piazza, Longhena
devised a series of monumental rusticated columns at ground level
for the last internal courtyard (figs 26, 28).54 For the adjacent
shops of the Casaria facing the Albergo della Luna he also
designed in rustic mode Doric piers, playfully adding a series of
individualised keystone heads that line this small, elongated square
that was a vital thoroughfare connecting the area immediately to
the west with the riva along the Bacino and the numerous
important warehouses (fondaci) and other public buildings there
(fig. 27). Longhena’s own Beccaria, now demolished, was also
situated in this area, between the Albergo della Luna and the
Fondaco della Farina.55
One of Longhena’s last prestige projects for the procurators was
the rebuilding of the small church of S. Basso situated adjacent to
the piazzetta dei Leoncini (figs 29–30).56 This simple hall church
has its secondary entrance at the left of the ‘secondary’ facade on above 29 S. Basso, facade looking right 30 Michele Marieschi,
the piazzetta facing St Mark’s, one of a pair together with the onto the piazzetta dei Leoncini, view of the piazzetta dei Leoncini
St Mark’s Square, 1675. and the church of S. Basso,
other entrance leading to the sacristy at the right of this calm, engraving, eighteenth century
classical, diminutive valedictory facade. Longhena demonstrated his (BCV St. Correr 829).
 understanding of the role of proto and the context of the square
by designing in an understated yet strongly plastic mode, here
using projecting three-quarter columns. Square-headed doorways
are surmounted by similar sized windows to obtain two views
from the room created behind the upper half of the facade, always
an important consideration given the premium on space
overlooking the square.
Monastic and conventual patrons such as the Benedictines at
S. Giorgio Maggiore who commissioned Longhena’s staircase
and library in the 1640s, preferred institutional austerity and a
monochrome aesthetic. The lofty, light-filled staircase space
unencumbered by internal supports is matched by the vaulted and
light-filled library for which Longhena also designed the
bookcases, an obvious but acceptable element of richness, later
reworked in the even richer bookcase design for the library at
SS Giovanni and Paolo (figs 31–2).57 This sumptuously austere
complex exemplifies the ambiguous nature of monastic patronage
where the monks often came from distinguished or noble families
and, as patrons, imposed their personal taste on an institutional
project, as noted by Baron Karl Ludwig Pöllnitz regarding S.
Giorgio Maggiore in 1735, who described the monastery as being
more magnificent than a royal palace and the staircase more
appropriate for a monarch’s residence than a convent.58 Among
other things, it was often the array of human figures that created
the richness of Longhena’s decoration, including his Ospedaletto
facade with its pilgrim sustainers and the telamons for the
Morosini tomb at S. Clemente in Isola (figs 33–4).
The continuing validity of Palladianism for patrons completed by 1571, was sited over the river Seriola at the point an elevation drawing for the facade that demonstrates his
commissioning works both in the capital and the mainland also where it enters the gardens. When these gardens were opened to comprehension of the function of the river crossing the loggia
contributed to the limited presence of Baroque architecture in the public in 1592, popular routes across them were created, one was to serve, as well as the style of Palladian edifice that the
Venice.59 In 1644 Longhena was acclaimed by Lorenzo Longo as of which went from the main entrance to the gate sited at the patron clearly desired.
the ‘nuovo Palladio’ (although to be accurate he was really the western corner where the Seriola flowed away. Here Gian Luigi The context for Longhena’s involvement is revealed in a letter
new Sansovino, a moniker he would surely have identified with sited the second loggia, initially turning to local masons for its he wrote to the patron in April 1649, from which six points
much more fully), and at mid-century, just before he embraced execution according to his designs, perhaps around 1648. Unsure emerge: first, that Longhena had not seen the loggia as it had
full colourism for his Carmelite patrons at the Scalzi, at the about, or unhappy with, the results as they began to emerge, in been begun; second, that he had been sent at least one elevation
request of the Vincentine noble Gian Luigi Valmarana, in 1649 1649 he sent Longhena the designs and asked for his opinion, drawing for the facade; third, that this facade elevation was sent to
Longhena designed a Palladian garden loggia (fig. 35).60 The indicating the architect’s willingness to comment on projects Longhena accompanied by three other drawings. Fourth, that
Valmarana gardens had been established a century earlier in 1552 already underway, and suggest improvements to this work by Longhena studied these drawings to suggest an improved facade
by Count Giacomo for his residence on the edge of the city. A others. Without knowledge of what had been done, or even elevation for which he made a single drawing; fifth, that Longhena
Palladian loggia, designed by Giacomo’s son Paolo Antonio and its precise location, Longhena’s response came in the form of only wanted to provide a facade elevation because he had not
been sent a plan or any precise measurements; sixth, that this
elevation drawing by Longhena was sent back to Valmarana
top 31 Baldassare Longhena, bottom 32 Baldassare Longhena, together with the drawings previously sent to him by the patron.61
proposal for the bookcases of the proposal for the bookcases in the Longhena’s drawing presented a revised loggia that deliberately
library at S. Giorgio Maggiore, library of S. Domenico, c.1676, left 33 Church of the Ospedaletto, right 34 Monument to Giorgio
c.1641, pen, ink, brown wash on graphite on paper, detail (ASV). S. Maria dei Derelitti, 1670, Morosini, S. Clemente in Isola, 1675, returned to Palladio’s work, specifically the riverfront facade of the
paper, detail (ASV). pilgrim-telamon on facade. telamon by Giusto Le Court. Villa Pisani at Lonigo of 1540 (fig. 36).62 Unlike the smooth

26 27

35 Baldassare Longhena, project
proposal for the main facade of the
Valmarana Loggia, Vicenza, detail,
1649, pen, ink, wash, graphite on
paper, c.300 × 435 mm (Vicenza,
Museo Civico, D.36).
facing page top 36 Andrea
Palladio, Villa Pisani at Lonigo,
begun in 1540, facade towards the
Brenta Canal.
facing page middle 37 Michele
Sanmicheli, Fortress of Sant’Andrea,
Lido, begun in 1543.
facing page bottom 38 Jacopo
Sansovino, Monument to Doge
Francesco Venier, S. Salvador, begun
in 1555, detail of the coat of arms.
rustication and shallow pilasters with diminutive Ionic capitals that
frame the arches of the loggia as built, Longhena proposed
robustly projecting rusticated Doric pilasters to contrast with the
smooth stonework of the two flanking arches which provide land
access from both banks. Trademark keystone heads link the arches
to the entablature, through which the oversize central keystone
breaks dramatically as a deliberate citation of Michele Sanmicheli
(fig. 37). The triangular pediment cites the Villa Pisani while the
florid coat of arms more specifically cites Jacopo Sansovino’s
monument to Doge Francesco Venier in S. Salvador in Venice of
c.1555 (fig. 38).63 Although it was not executed, Longhena’s design
demonstrates stylistic accommodation to his understanding of the
patron’s wishes. It also shows his ability to work convincingly in
Palladian mode, overlaying and updating this with characteristic
seventeenth-century elements such as the exuberant central
keystone and display of heraldry.
If Palladianism dominated Vicenza in benign mode, the question
of the completion of Milan’s Gothic cathedral continued to vex
those responsible and in 1653 Longhena, together with the
engineer Sebastiano Roccatagliata, was invited to respond to the
problem by expressing an opinion on the facade proposals of Carlo
Buzzi (fig. 39) and Francesco Castelli (fig. 40). Their response,
written the year before the death of the Milanese architect
Francesco Maria Ricchino, is collated among the opinions of eight
architects including Bernini and Bartolomeo Avanzini.64
The preceding year, in March 1652, Bernini had pronounced
favourably on the designs by Castelli, preferring them to those of
Buzzi. Longhena and Roccatagliata – without knowledge of other
responses – wrote in July 1653 and also expressed their preference
for Castelli’s designs. They also suggested improvements, just as
Bernini had proposed the inclusion of twin bell towers flanking
the facade, recalling his own failed project for the bell towers of
St Peter’s in Rome in 1638–41.65 The fact that they were being
jointly addressed as ‘Sebastiano Rocca Tagliata Engineer, and
Baldassar Longhena, Venetian Architects’ suggests that
Roccatagliata’s engineering expertise went beyond the
considerable knowledge Longhena is well known to have had.66
They were united in their belief that Buzzi’s design did not
mediate well between the Gothic and Roman whereas Castelli’s
proposals judiciously created concord between all the parts, and
that his facade elevation, section and plan were the most
appropriate in relation to the extant fabric, both with respect to
the interior and the exterior elevations of the building:
We judge that he has devised this invention so as to correspond
to similar architecture as that on the interior of the said
29

39 Carlo Buzzi, proposal for the
facade of Milan cathedral, 1647–8,
engraving (Milan, Archivio Storico
Civico, Raccolta Bianconi, II, 44).
30
cathedral, also on the sides of the exterior, and this we judge
more majestic and worthy as here the free-standing columns are
set in front of the wall of the facade with its pilasters, features
which are missing from Buzzi’s design.67
The key issue was that only Castelli’s design included free-standing
columns for the facade so it was clearly the preferred solution of
both the patrons and the architects interrogated. It was here that
Longhena’s and Roccatagliata’s engineering expertise was crucial as
one of the main problems with the facade by Pellegrino Tibaldi
was the execution of the columns, as commented upon by the
Roman architects enquiring about the Salute competition in 1630:
If with columns, or with pilasters, and in the first case, up to
what size could be transported to Venice, so as to avoid the
difficulties that the Milanese have at present in executing the
design made by Pellegrino for the facade of their cathedral, that
they cannot finish because they cannot find columns of that
scale?68
The Venetians judged Castelli’s free-standing columns to be sound
because of their judicious placement:
These are not set very far from the walls of the facade, so one
could build their foundations together with the foundations of
the walls of the said facade, verily this has been carefully
thought through by Castelli to ensure this work.69
This would avoid the problems encountered when adding the
facade revetment directly onto the substructure as occurred at the
‘Church of S. Giorgio Maggiore, that up until now, a bit at a
time, has had many cracks appear in the church’.70 Longhena and
Roccatagliata also judged successful the shallowness of the loggia:
If one wanted to bring the columns of the facade further
forward, in addition to causing greater insecurity for the arches
and crossing, only by placing iron chains at the bases of the
vaults could one with great difficulty ensure their security, but
this would ruin the view and wouldn’t be entirely safe.71
Their only suggestion was that Castelli should add at least another
base element under his planned column bases to raise them a bit
so that they then would not rest directly on the staircase, and
they concluded with a precise judgement about Gothic
architecture, ‘for a Gothic work it will be beautiful and
praiseworthy’.72
This considered response to Gothic style highlights the striking
plurality of Longhena’s thought and work at mid-century when,
within five years from 1649 to 1654, he drew up a Palladian
loggia elevation for a private patron in Vicenza, sent an expert
opinion of the relative merits of classicising and Gothic proposals
for the facade of Milan cathedral, and designed his pioneering
romanising church for the Barefoot Carmelites in Venice, which
embraced the rich colourism about to become so characteristic of
religious architecture in Rome, at the same time creating an
innovative spatial conception for the interior that was unique.
As proto to the procurators, Longhena created ephemeral
architectural displays such as that of June 1649 when he arranged
in St Mark’s, ‘the display of the Host on 20 June past on our
orders because of the victory against the Turk’. He supervised the
construction and the renumeration for the artisans involved in the
project, along with himself for ‘the raised platform for the singers,
festoons on the main door, for flowers, to the painter Bortolo
Cini for a cornice for the repairs, to our proto for expenses set
out by him in his accounts’.73 In the ducal chapel there were
endless occasions such as these and Martina Frank has plausibly
suggested that Longhena was responsible for the funeral apparata
for Lorenzo Marcello in 1657 and for Lazzaro Mocenigo in
1658.74 Longhena’s greatest opportunity in this genre came in
October 1669 when he designed the temporary catafalque for the
funeral rites of François de Vendôme, Duc de Beaufort (fig. 41).75
Beaufort, grandson of Henry IV, was made a papal admiral in
May 1669 and died on 25 June in Candia. In Rome Bernini
devised a spectacular pyramidal catafalque for the rites held in
S. Maria in Aracoeli on 22 September 1669 (fig. 43).76 The
Venetian senate’s memorial service only took place in October,
after some delay, although they had voted to erect both a
catafalque in St Mark’s and build a cenotaph (never realised) as
early as 16 August 1669. Longhena was to be responsible for the
latter, in conjunction with Daniel Bragadin as the senator who
was deputised to ‘erect it in the church of the Jesuits, this design
by Baldassare Longhena architect, for which will be employed
four columns of Greek marble that have languished at length
unused by the church of St Mark’s’.77
The catafalque Longhena designed was typical of these
temporary decorative structures – it was built of wood, canvas and
stucco in imitation of solid stone or metal, and designed for the
display of a coffin. In the case of the Beaufort funeral
rites, the catafalque functioned as a cenotaph or visual marker
during the Missa Post Acceptum Mortis Nuncium, traditionally
offered for a person of distinction who had died in a distant
place. Often a scholar was appointed to work out an iconography
of allegorical representations and compose suitable epigrams. They 40 Francesco Castelli, proposal for
the facade of Milan cathedral, 1651,
might also write the text for a commemorative pamphlet, and an engraving (Milan, Archivio della
artist might be commissioned to record the event in an engraving: Fabbrica del Duomo).
31
left 41 Antonio Bosio, Apparato
funebre per il duca di Vendôme in
Saint Mark’s, 1669, engraving, detail
of the octagonal structure and
telamons and dome (BCV St. Correr
2991).

facing page 42 S. Nicolò da

Tolentino, high altar begun 1661.

above 43 Gianlorenzo Bernini,
catafalque for the funeral rites of
François de Vendôme in S. Maria in
Aracoeli, Rome, 1669, engraving by
Domenico De Rossi.
34
facing page 44 Mausoleum of
Doge Giovanni Pesaro, 1665–9,
S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, detail.
here the engraving of 1669 by Antonio Bosio included details
such as the armour set against the walls of the ducal chapel. All
this belonged to the tradition of imitating ancient practice as
explicitly mentioned in the Breve racconto published on the
occasion.78
Longhena had recourse to depicting vigorous telamonic and
allegorical figures on two tall octagonal registers, crowned by a
dome bearing a celestial visitant. Placed under the central dome,
the octagonal structure, flanked by figures of soldiers and
equestrians, is set on a raised base decorated with trophies and
preceded by figures of soldiers on pedestals that flank the staircase
access. The eight large telamons on pedestals support the Doric
frieze while numerous other figures animate the upper level
together with Beaufort’s coat of arms, both set below the dome
and lantern with a winged angel carrying a palm. This replicated
Longhena’s own high altar at S. Nicolò da Tolentino designed in
1661 but still under construction (fig. 42).
The Tolentino commission was the second large polychrome
high altar alla romana designed by Longhena, following that of the
Scalzi in 1654. Precedents in Venice were few besides much
earlier models such as the altars at S. Giorgio Maggiore (1592–3)
and the Redentore (1589–90); and those by Girolamo Campagna
for S. Tomà in 1616 and for S. Lorenzo in 1618, which Longhena
certainly knew well. The last has an enclosing screen that presents
in miniature the triumphal arrangement of the central facade of
the Salute, including the putto on the projecting keystone
(see fig. 176). The other example was the polychrome high altar
designed in 1629 by Cosimo Fanzago and assembled by others in
1634 for the church of S. Nicolò del Lido (see fig. 179). Fanzago,
from Clusone in the province of Bergamo, came to Venice on his
return from Naples to his native city and signed a contract in
1629 for the high altar of this church rebuilt from 1626, where it
is inserted into the restricted sanctuary space comparable to that
at the Tolentino.79 Undoubtedly Fanzago obtained this
commission because the prior at this time was David Roto, a
native of Bergamo, who surely favoured one of his countrymen.80
As in his bookcases and other designs, sculptures of the human
figure form an integral part of Longhena’s work: on the Beaufort
monument they animate the entire structure and its surrounds, on
the Tolentino altar they dramatise the first register creating a
sophisticated visual interaction with the free-standing figures that
flank them, and on the Pesaro mausoleum they animate the
upper register like the cast of a theatrical production arrayed in
the footlights of the proscenium arch (figs 44–5) that seems little
different in intent from Bernini’s monument to Alexander VII
(fig. 46).

45 Mausoleum of Doge Giovanni
Pesaro, 1665–9, S. Maria Gloriosa dei
Frari, upper register.
Le Court was the principal sculptor of an extensive équipe that
worked together on the high altars designed by Longhena at
S. Nicolò da Tolentino (1661–72) and at S. Pietro di Castello
(1662–5), as well as at the Pesaro monument at the Frari (1665–9).
In contradistinction at S. Maria della Salute Le Court alone was
responsible for no less than twenty monumental statues in the key
areas of the entrance vestibule, rotunda and sanctuary flanking the
high altar for the sculptural programme. As his fruitful
collaboration with Longhena developed further over time,
Longhena began to design altars ever more dominated by their
sculptural ensembles culminating in that of the high altar at the
Salute.81 To this end, Longhena’s idea in around 1660 for the high
altar that Martinioni recorded then changed in 1670 when the
senate decided to allocate to the Salute the icon of the Madonna
Mesopanditissa to be inserted in the high altar, a work completed
by 1674 when Padovanino’s painting was shifted to the sacristy.82
Thus the earlier idea for an altar closer to a tabernacle alla romana,
that probably was linked to Longhena’s idea to decorate the
interior of the cupola, was set aside but we have Martinioni’s
words of around 1661–3, ‘In the middle of the said chapel is the
free-standing altar of fine Carrara marble – into which will be
inserted thin slabs of beautiful coloured stones and burnished
gilded bronze plaques – with four columns of the same which
form the Baldacchin over this altar: very white and of
the Corinthian order, with the shafts alone being 18 feet each’.83
Instead of polychrome marble and gilded bronze inserts, the
sophisticated white Carrara marble mensa is surmounted by
Le Court’s magnificent marble ensemble.84
Although less immediately flamboyant, Longhena’s tombs of the
1660s reveal a sensitivity to materials and design, particularly the
sarcophagus of the monument to Almerico d’Este in the Frari,
with its strong, robust and sumptuous dark green marble extruded
from the original block (see image on p. viii). Longhena could
also be theatrical, even though in an austere mode, with his cast
of figures animating the Vendramin chapel at S. Pietro di Castello,
executed by Michael Fabris Ongaro whose masterpiece of
Vendramin being installed as a cardinal is perhaps the most
coherent sculptural ensemble of these years (figs 47–8).85
Longhena’s scenographic and theatrical approach to design was
not limited to sculptural ensembles, but also was a key concept for
his two secure villas executed in these same decades of the 1650s
and 1660s, both of which are characterised by a scenographic
approach. This concept in particular was the dominant idea
controlling the design of the Viaro-Giustiniani villa at Paluello on
46 Gianlorenzo Bernini, Mausoleum
the Brenta Canal, designed in 1657 for Vincenzo Viaro (figs of Alexander VII, St Peter’s, Rome,
49–50).86 Here Longhena made the surprising choice to set back 1671.
37

47 Vendramin chapel in S. Pietro di
Castello, view towards the left,
1650s.
38
the central body of this villa situated on the banks of the Brenta
so that the Barchesse (functional wings for housing animals and
agricultural machines) and their connecting walls took on the
function of projecting avante-corps in such a way that the main
body of the villa comes into view only as one comes to a certain
point on the water. Longhena adopted a different approach when
he designed in the same decades the villa later known as
Contarini delle Quattro Torri and described in an eighteenth-
century inventory of its furniture as the ‘Rottonda alla Mira’
(destroyed between 1810 and 1828) also on the Brenta at Mira
Taglio (fig. 51). Longhena accentuated the scenograhic effect here
in this, his most spectacular and prestigious villa. Differing from
the Viaro villa, which appears only once when one passes the
wings of the Barchesse, but which in plan remains a traditional
block-like shape with a pedimented portico, the Quattro Torri
villa presents an architectural choice first adopted by Longhena in
1631 for the church of the Salute, but also inspired by an image in
Serlio: from the main body of the building wings extend that
prompt new points of view to emerge as one proceeds along the
Brenta.87 The villa’s scenographic nature attracted the attention of
Nicodemus Tessin the Younger who, in 1687–8, despite not
knowing who the architect was, sketched out in his travel diary
the plan of the building, describing it in some detail.88
The scenographic nature of the exterior was accompanied by
the development of comparable interior spaces: the octagonal
central space rose prominently above the surrounding two-storey
body of the fabric and was lit by four windows inserted under
the octagonal roof, but probably also by light entering from the
serliana windows on the entrance facade and from the windows at
their sides. In this case here the project would have included a
sequence of interior serlianas set around the central room. It is
also possible that there was a grand double-ramp staircase
connecting the ground and upper floors set within the central
octagonal space. Similar spatial and scenographic concepts were
not always acceptable to patrons, and at the Zane palace where
Longhena designed the facade in 1655, his most talented successor
Antonio Gaspari subsequently proposed a cylindrical tower
staircase which the patrons decided not to accept, whereas the
proposal, perhaps originally made by Longhena, for a library set in
the grounds adjacent to the casino, was drawn up by Gaspari and
executed (fig. 52).
The casino was not only the model for the independent library
building set in a palace garden, but in its own right it had
become an increasingly significant element of palace design as
card-playing in such a ridotto had developed into an important
pastime for men at the top of the political élite, such as Giovanni
Pesaro and Bertucci Valier, both of whom became doge.89 In
addition to the increasing devotion to pleasurable pastimes such as
card-playing, another major development in Venice in the second
half of the seventeenth century was the patrician preference for
horse-riding rather than rowing. One suspects that becoming a
member of the Cavallerizza (the riding club) and stabling one’s
horse there was by invitation only and in effect restricted to old
nobles. This was one of the few ways they could maintain
distinction, through expense and exclusivity, as anyone could go
rowing and moor boats outside a palace, whereas horse-riding,
particularly in Venice, was a highly recherché pastime. In 1675
Longhena drew up the ground plan for the new stables adjacent
to SS Giovanni and Paolo, where many patricians appear to have
passed a significant part of each day according to Vincenzo
Coronelli writing in 1700, ‘Horse-riding is done in the morning
at SS Giovanni and Paolo during weekdays’ (fig. 53).90 Cristoforo
Ivanovich’s Minerva al Tavolino of 1682 publishes numerous letters
between Ivanovich and Longhena’s patron Leonardo Pesaro, as
well as with another younger member of the family, Giovanni
Pesaro (not the doge), captain of Vicenza, in which they often
discuss horse-riding and the publication also includes a long and
detailed letter about masked horse-riding in the noble Academy
of Venice on 27 February 1679.91 This ties in well with what is
known of the very haughty Giovanni who became doge, and
whose world view was well expressed by Antonio Collurafi da
Librizzi of 1623, ‘It is not enough then for our noble to say: I am
born noble; but he should also say: I want to live nobly, I want to
die nobly’. By the time Pesaro became doge, Venice had become
much more aristocratic in its manifestations and manners.92
Compared to Longhena’s pragmatic design of the stables, at the
other end of the same complex of buildings is one of his most
elaborate works, the 1670 facade of the Ospedaletto (fig. 55). The
design demonstrates the continuity of Longhena’s approach, here
in particular his enjoyment in creating a satisfying oblique view of
his buildings. It also displays his sensitivity to designing his
exteriors in a way that they become animated as one moves past
them, for which he deployed, from the beginning to the end of
his career, series or clusters of architectural elements, which
distinguish his work from that of his contemporaries and
predecessors.
Because the approach to the Ospedaletto is highly restricted,
Longhena employed robustly projecting square Ionic pilasters with
oversized grotesque masks so that, at first, they visually overlap 48 Michael Fabris Ongaro,
and only as one comes closer do they separate into distinct bas-relief depicting the investiture of
Cardinal Francesco Vendramin,
elements (fig. 55).93 The same approach, albeit more discretely Vendramin chapel, S. Pietro di
expressed, appeared years earlier on the facade of the Widmann Castello, 1650s.
39
49 Gianfranco Costa, Villa Viaro at
Paluello (begun 1657, demolished
1810–28) on the Brenta Canal, 1768,
engraving (BCV).

51 Gianfrancesco Costa, Villa

Contarini delle Quattro Torri at Mira
50 Angelo Sacchetti, Villa Viaro at Taglio (begun 1664, demolished
Paluello, detail of site plan (ASV 1810–24) on the Brenta Canal, 1768,
Notarile atti, b. 10496). engraving (BCV St. E.35).

52 Antonio Gaspari, casino and
library in the garden of the Zane
palace, pen, ink and graphite on
paper, 410 × 550 mm (BCV RG I 92).
palace, where the four volutes which provide the central focus for
the palace facade also overlap when seen on the approach from
the acute angle crossing the bridge to arrive at the gate leading to
the land entrance (fig. 54). This design approach explains
Longhena’s earlier employment of clusters of capitals in the aisles
at S. Maria Assunta, Chioggia where they activate visually the
space as one moves about the church (fig. 56). This effect was
repeated in a subdued mode with the clusters of capitals in the
ambulatory of the Salute (fig. 57), and spectacularly in his greatest
invention – the sixteen volutes of the Salute (see fig. 15).94 This
use of volutes was distinctly innovative because they are placed so
as to constantly overlap and visually separate as the spectator
changes position when traversing the city.
The repetition of elements, even in a minor key, also
characterises the facade of the Zane palace with its series of
carved keystone heads, a favourite Longhena device (fig. 59), the
series of heads at water level and on the first floor pediments and
window tabernacles of the Belloni palace (fig. 58), not to mention
the playful repetition of stars and moons in its frieze and the
keystone heads of the twin arches of the side water entrance of
the Pesaro palace. The most impressive example of this approach is
at the Pesaro palace where Longhena’s diamond rustication for the
ground and mezzanine floors appears to constantly change shape
as one traverses the Grand Canal (figs 61–2). This monumental
base supports the syncopated rhythm of columns prominently
projecting beyond the body of the building. The repetition of
projecting gargoyle heads at water level, repeats in a much louder
voice the subtle repetition of capitals at water level along the rio
side of S. Maria dei Miracoli (figs 60, 63), and pilasters and
balconies on the numerous windows along the flank of the
building indicate that Longhena did not seek to create beauty
through single architectural elements, but rather through their
combination in series and clusters that create spectacular visual
effects requiring the movement of the spectator in relation to the
building, as is already demonstrated in his plan of the Pesaro
palace with the projecting balconies subsequently amplified in
effect by Gaspari’s addition of pilasters to this rio facade (fig. 64).95
A related aspect of Longhena’s design approach is his consistent
use of projecting ‘mirror’ wall panels (specchiature) which also
animate more subtly the perception of a palace facade, especially
when seen from an oblique angle, and they were an economical
substitute for the orders. The culmination of this approach is seen 53 Baldassare Longhena, detail of
on the facade of the Scuola dei Greci, Longhena’s most powerful site plan of the Cavallerizza (riding
essay in the genre (fig. 65). Here deliberately used, one suspects, school) at SS Giovanni and Paolo,
1675, pen, ink, wash on paper,
because Longhena understood that the orientation of the building 495 × 763 mm (ASV Misc. Mappe
meant that as the sun moved it would bathe the facade surface 552).
43
facing page 54 Widmann palace at above 55 Church of the
S. Canciano, begun after 1637, detail Ospedaletto, 1670, detail of the
of facade with main entrance. lower register.

56 S. Maria Assunta, Chioggia,
begun 1624, interior, group of
pilasters and capitals in the aisle.
57 S. Maria della Salute, interior,
group of pilasters and capitals in the
ambulatory.
with light in a slowly but constantly changing way, so that
the window openings remained dark relative to their frames of
simple white Istrian stone, this entire effect is reversed in the
‘mirrors’ which project and catch the light on their raised panels
which create strong shadow on two sides, an animation achieved
entirely without orders.
These examples put in context and confirm as a deliberate
Longhenan method the extraordinary overlapping visual effects of
the twin but unequal domes of the Salute that he devised in the
1650s, the differences between the major dome surrounded by the
elaborate combination of volutes and figure sculpture, and the
simplicity of the secondary dome which acts as the perfect foil,
ensuring the prominence of the Salute, due in equal measure to
its monumentality and its location in the urban fabric of the city
(fig. 66). Such large-scale changing views for the moving spectator
are also created closer up by the volutes, the powerful sculptural
quality of which from nearby is reinforced by the figure sculpture
which they support, while from afar they also function like the
points of a compass as one moves across the Bacino.96 This critical
scenographic effect is perhaps the most striking feature that
Longhena established, together with the Salute’s ability to function
as a landmark, when seen from St Mark’s Square, as well as when
approaching the centre of the city from the Lido, or progressing
towards the building over the temporary pontoon bridge thrown
across the Grand Canal.97 No other building of the early
seventeenth century seems to combine this ability to sustain
scrutiny from near and afar so successfully, but its monumentality
is not achieved at the expense of a detailed finish: Longhena’s
immense sensibility to architectural and sculptural effects resulted
in a building which also works particularly well from nearby.
Although executed in the 1690s, the cherubs flanking the steps of
the water entrance – where they would have been seen by the
doge and signoria when arriving by boat – exemplify such
detailed sculptural work perfectly incorporated into the larger
architectural and urban setting of the building (fig. 67). The
enormous, soaring dome of the Salute changed forever the
Venetian landscape by dominating the view of the Bacino. This
fits in well with a dominating idea during the Baroque of the
world as scenery, in which the Salute appears ‘like a fleeting
thought fortuitously hardened into permanence’, its unique
scenographic aspect suggesting its transitional character, which
seems as though it was made for view painters who captured its
likeness in their photographic-style canvases, reminding the top 58 Belloni palace, detail of
spectator, as had Shakespeare a few decades earlier, that ‘All the frieze.
bottom 60 Pietro Lombardo and
world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’ (As middle 59 Zane palace, first main others, S. Maria dei Miracoli, 1480,
you like it, ii, vii, 140–1).98 floor and detail of keystone head. detail of the capitals at water level.
47
 62 Pesaro palace, view of angle of
61 Pesaro palace, lateral facade. palace.

63 Pesaro palace, facade details of
lions’ heads at water level.
This discussion represents an attempt to respond to the specific
question: What is the character and nature of the Venetian
Baroque? The different currents in seventeenth-century
architecture were studied by Rudolf Wittkower in a series of
influential papers, collected in volumes after his death: Palladio and
English Palladianism in 1974, Gothic versus Classic: architectural projects
in seventeenth century Italy in 1974 and Studies in the Italian Baroque
in 1975. Yet surprisingly, given his pioneering study of the Salute
of 1957 and his generally appreciative comments on Longhena,
Wittkower remained unimpressed by the architect’s Carmelite
church of the Scalzi, thus exemplifying an historiographical
problem. Had Longhena’s commission in 1654 come not from the
Carmelites, but rather from the Jesuits, there is little doubt that
his design would have been recognised long ago for its innovative
qualities.99 Why has this church not figured in accounts of Italian
Baroque or seventeenth-century architecture, except for the
occasional mention? It is the historiographical, rather than the
historical context that explains the process by which the Venetian
Baroque became marginalised and the absence of any systematic
study of the Barefoot Carmelite order and their architecture until
very recently has played a determining factor in the lack of
attention devoted to this particular church.100 The historiographical
irony is that it was Wittkower who did more than any other
scholar of his generation to undertake specific non-Roman case
studies of seventeenth-century Italian architecture and yet his
influential Pelican History of Art survey of the period is
principally a search for the Baroque rather than an account of the
seventeenth century and his adopted structure is rigorously
divided into sections entitled ‘Rome’ and ‘Outside Rome’, thereby
perpetuating a division absolutely new in its time, that originated
with Heinrich Wölfflin in the 1880s.
The architecture of the Italian Baroque, as it was examined by
other pioneering German-speaking historians such as Cornelius
Gurlitt, was firmly set within a pan-European context. Gurlitt
transformed the field in 1887 with the publication of his Geschichte
des Barockstiles in Italien, one of nine volumes of the Geschichte der
Neueren Baukunst each of which was dedicated to national schools
and distinguished a Renaissance period from that of the Baroque
and later styles. Individual titles included: the Renaissance in Italy,
in Germany, and in France (volumes one to four), and the
Baroque, Rococo and Classicism in Italy, in Belgium, Holland, and
France, in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and in Spain
(volumes five to eight).101 The first part of Gurlitt’s Barockstiles is
dedicated to the ‘Spätrenaissance’ and covered the reform of the
church and numerous architects of the sixteenth century. Part two
is dedicated to the ‘Barockstil’ and examines the Florentines and 64 Pesaro palace, lateral facade.
51
Bartolomeo Bianco in Genova, before dedicating three chapters in
sequence to Sansovino and Sanmicheli, Scamozzi, and Longhena
and his school, thus emphasising the continuity between the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Venice. This arrangement
also cleared the way for Gurlitt’s treatment of the Roman Baroque
and its aftermath which fills the rest of the volume. A similar
approach, despite its title, had been published a year earlier by
Gustav Ebe, whose Spät-Renaissance of 1886 was also arranged into
national schools and within this into regional schools and covering
all the arts. Ebe also arranged his treatment of the ‘Barockstils’
geographically, moving from Rome to Florence, then to Modena
and Avanzini at the ducal palace, and also mentioning Ferrara,
Parma and Bologna, before arriving at Venice and Longhena.102
This ecumenical approach to pan-European Baroque divided into
national and local schools continued in various surveys and studies
such as that by Wilhelm Lübke, Die Kunst der Barockzeit und des
Rokoko of 1905 and by Albert Kuhn, Geschichte der Baukunst of
1909. The book-length study by Max Zimmerman, ‘Die Kunst im
Zeitalter des Barockstils’, of 1910 included a chapter on ‘Die
selbständige Entwicklung des Barock im übrigen Italien’ (the
autonomous development of northern Italian Baroque), as did that
by Martin Briggs, Baroque architecture of 1913, while that by Albert
Brinckmann, Die Baukunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts of 1919 was
refreshingly organised by themes rather than locality.103 Ebe’s and
Gurlitt’s pan-Italian examinations within the context of the
individual nation, as a positivist presentation of actual buildings
and objects, was taken up in the work of David Joseph Geschichte
der Architektur Italiens of 1907 and by Corrado Ricci, Baukunst und
Dekorativ Skulptur der Barockzeit in Italien of 1922, just a few years
before the study of the Baroque received a withering attack by
Benedetto Croce, one of Italy’s foremost historians, with his
infamous judgement that, ‘The Baroque is a type of artistic
ugliness and, as such, has nothing to do with art’.104
Shortly after Croce’s broadside, the earlier type of inclusive
survey became unfashionable as the European political context
changed dramatically. There was a subsequent return to it in
Rudolf Wittkower’s Art and architecture in Italy of 1958, and hence
the volume by John Varriano Italian Baroque and Rococo architecture
of 1986, and Daniela del Pesco L’architettura del Seicento of 1998,
which is organised by region and in which a chapter is dedicated
to Venice, a structure repeated in the edited volume by Aurora
Scotti Il Seicento of 2003.105 Yet the post-World War Two
reappearance and re-use of this model belies much of the facing page 65 Flangini college top 66 S. Maria della Salute and
suppression and omission that occurred between the 1880s and within the S. Giorgio dei Greci the Dogana da Mar.
complex, facade, 1670s (from
the 1950s in the service of two different ideological approaches: Cristinelli 1972). bottom 67 S. Maria della Salute,
one theory-centred and the other Roman-centred. cherub head on the water staircase.

53
 The first step towards the ‘disappearance’ of Venetian Baroque
architecture occurred in the year following Gurlitt’s publication,
with the appearance of Heinrich Wölfflin’s pioneering Renaissance
und Barock: eine Untersuchung über Wesen und Entstehung des
Barockstils in Italien in 1888. This enormously influential volume
focused almost exclusively on Rome, both in textual coverage and
for its illustrations, in order to explain the differences between the
Renaissance and Baroque styles that Wölfflin wished to expound,
and which was obviously facilitated by restricting the study to the
single city containing the most important architecture of the
period. This restriction was maintained in the more theoretical
study of the painterly in architecture by August Schmarsow, whose
Barock und Rokoko of 1897 focused exclusively on Florence, Rome
and seventeenth-century France, while Wölfflin’s Kunstgeschichtliche
Grundbegriffe of 1915 only included the architecture of Florence
and Rome, Munich and Vienna.106 Because these works sought a
theoretical approach to the Baroque, and aimed at establishing
defining concepts of its meaning, the authors chose to formulate
their definitions through a reading of the Roman Baroque as it
was considered the most coherent and consistent, both in time
and place, and in the quality and quantity of work produced. This
shift in emphasis was taken up to a certain extent by Alois Riegl
in his study of Die Entstehung der Barockkunst in Rom of 1908, and
by Dagobert Frey, Architettura barocca of 1928 who focused on
Rome, thereby assigning to the Roman Baroque the defining
criteria for the entire Italian Baroque.107 This Roman focus
resulted in a further round of surveys not being informed by a
pan-Italian approach but rather by the new Roman-centred
definition, such as that by Werner Weisbach’s Propyläen-
Kunstgeschichte survey Die Kunst des Barock of 1924, where
architecture outside Rome was either omitted or judged
negatively.108 Ironically, this change occurred just as the general
critical opprobium was about to be lifted from the Baroque, that
is to say the Roman Baroque, because those who were pioneering
this sea-change in opinion, in order to maintain a party line,
began to apply the same opprobium to the rest of seventeenth-
century Italian architecture by either omitting it or relegating it
to an appendage or appendix: the study by Giuseppe De Logu,
L’architettura italiana del Seicento e del Settecento of 1935 is divided
into two distinct books, one focused on Rome and the other on
the rest of Italy.109 Later, as art history moved from style-based
categories such as ‘Barock’ or for that matter ‘Spät-Renaissance’,
to more neutral categories such as ‘seventeenth century’ the
accounts being offered actually became on the one hand less
positivist and more theoretical about the Baroque, which was an
important development, but on the other hand much less neutral
54
and a great deal more opinionated, so that when Longhena’s the Salute but does not illustrate it. In his Renaissance und Barock results of this wider research were only partially incorporated in
contribution was judged he was often not considered or accepted of 1968 Erich Hubala only included the Pesaro palace, and even the structure and methodology underlying the Triumph of the
as a Baroque architect, although his S. Maria della Salute and, in a potentially more neutral and inclusive structure such as Baroque exhibition that opened in Turin in 1999, which aimed at
sometimes, his Pesaro palace, occasionally were. Most of these the Propyläen-Kunstgeschichte survey of 1970, Die Kunst des 17. being inclusive of all Italy and Europe and which examined
assessments hinged singly on S. Maria della Salute and its status Jahrhunderts, the major state-commissioned architectural monument Classicism together with the Baroque, but only partially
vis-à-vis the Baroque. of seventeenth-century Venice is not illustrated and only succeeded.117 It also only partially took advantage of the
Wittkower’s influential survey of 1958, Art and architecture in Italy mentioned as a line item in the secondary documentation.112 Even methodological innovations presented in the volume by Hermann
1600 to 1750 described Longhena’s achievement at Venice as ‘the more surprising is the entire omission of Longhena from the Bauer, Barock: Kunst einer Epoche of 1992.118 Bauer dedicated his
only high-class alternative Italy had to offer’, thus assigning S. survey of seventeenth-century art and architecture published in last five chapters to ‘Baroque art and Baroque celebrations’,
Maria della Salute, the staircase at S. Giorgio Maggiore and, to a 2005 by Ann Sutherland Harris.113 Hubala’s was an altogether ‘Ceremonial and representation’, ‘Conceits’, ‘Theatre and
lesser extent, the Pesaro and Rezzonico palaces a pre-eminence in perplexing treatment given that Wittkower had already shown one theatricality’ and ‘Illusionism’. By focusing on a series of themes,
the field of Italian Baroque architecture ‘outside Rome’, way out of the historiographical dilemma by embracing the he was able to look across the spectrum of artistic production and
confirmed by his short article of 1957 and the expanded version pioneering 1954 discussion by Giulio Carlo Argan of the Baroque find many issues and approaches that were alike. Not surprisingly,
of 1963.110 Wittkower focused squarely on Longhena’s early, as rhetoric.114 Surely present at this conference held at the Cini the themes he chose were closely linked to temporary or
Palladian-inspired, monochrome architecture, rather than on his Foundation in 1954, Wittkower fully accepted Argan’s ephemeral production, because in this sphere the forms used in
later, richly colouristic architecture and sculpture, a view that he conceptualisation of the Baroque which appears prominently in Venice, and throughout Italy, are comparable to those found in
inherited from his German predecessors and passed on to his the introduction to his powerful survey. One wonders if this was Germany.119 Like Sansovino, Sanmicheli, Palladio and Scamozzi, all
Anglo-American successors, and which still dominates today. This also the moment that Wittkower decided to write a focused study of whom had created innovative temporary triumphal architecture
has also resulted in Longhena’s Salute continuing to feature of S. Maria della Salute, the single obvious Baroque monument in in Venice and the Veneto, Longhena created such structures
prominently in an Italian context, yet disappearing almost Venice and until then significantly understudied.115 throughout his career as proto to the procurators. He was also
completely in the wider European context where the focus Wittkower’s pioneering role of recuperating through case one of the first architects to use explicitly, in permanent form,
remains fixed on Rome. It is worth quoting Wittkower’s 1958 studies the regional variations of seventeenth-century architecture types predominantly identified with ephemeral architecture such
judgement of Longhena: influenced scholars working in the English language such as as the triumphal arch for the facade of the Salute, and the overall
Anthony Blunt who published Sicilian Baroque Architecture in 1968 sense of his votive church as a theatre of the world floating in
Venice, it is true, had a great architect [. . .] When all is said
and Neapolitan Baroque and Rococo architecture in 1975.116 But the the water.120
and done, there remain only three High Baroque architects of
more than average rank outside Rome: Longhena in Venice,
Gherardo Silvani in Florence, and Cosimo Franzago in Naples.
Of these, Longhena seems to me by far the greatest [. . .]
unquestionably he is the only Venetian architect of the
seventeenth century who comes close in stature to the great
Romans [. . .] one capital work, S. Maria della Salute [. . .] this
is in every respect one of the most interesting and subtle
structures of the entire seventeenth century [. . .] Longhena had
worked out an alternative to the Roman Baroque. His Venetian
Baroque was, in fact, the only high-class alternative Italy had to
offer [. . .] His final triumph of sculptural accentuation, Baroque
monumentality, and luminous richness will be found in the
celebrated Palazzi Rezzonico and Pesaro [. . .] in the staircase
hall of the monastery of S. Giorgio Maggiore [. . .] Longhena
once again proved his consummate skill as a master of scenic
architecture. This staircase hall is far in advance of its time.111
Despite Wittkower’s attention to Longhena’s significance, shorter
surveys such as Baroque and Rococo Architecture of 1961 by Henry
Millon is restricted to Rome as is the longer survey by Werner
Hager of Barock Architektur of 1968 which only briefly mentions
55