Venice’s Hidden Churches Put the Biennale to Shame

The American pavilion at Venice’s Biennale is so without boom, pow, KO, and thwack, so mild-mannered, so not far from the target — but a miss is still a miss. In Minor Keys, the Biennale’s anchor show, is bloated and tedious, with many missed opportunities. So I went to church. In between Biennale visits I needed to take succor in the Lord. I was a serial church goer, visiting my favorite small churches in Cannaregio, the northernmost of Venice’s six sestieres, or districts, and, with Castello, the least touristical. To finish August on a mystical note, I bring you the places I always try to visit in Venice. I think I might have been a travel agent in some past life.

The Republic of Venice fell in 1797, at 1,100 years old, when French troops under Napoleon’s command forced the last doge, the supreme leader, to abdicate. What a feather in the despot’s tricorn must that have been. I chuckle over most art restitution claims these days, in part because around a third of Venice’s art treasures were looted, many sent to the Louvre, now flush with works by Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. Some slipped through grasping French fingers, among them Titian’s Martyrdom of St. Lawrence from 1558, or Larry on the Grill, as graduate students call it. It’s in the church called the I Gesuiti in Cannaregio, not to be confused with the Gesuati in Dorsoduro on the Giudecca canal. That’s a lovely Rococo church with art by Tiepolo and Piazzetta, but follow the scent of burning flesh to see the splendid Titian. It’s that convincing.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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The American pavilion at Venice’s Biennale is so without boom, pow, KO, and thwack, so mild-mannered, so not far from the target — but a miss is still a miss. In Minor Keys, the Biennale’s anchor show, is bloated and tedious, with many missed opportunities. So I went to church. In between Biennale visits I needed to take succor in the Lord. I was a serial church goer, visiting my favorite small churches in Cannaregio, the northernmost of Venice’s six sestieres, or districts, and, with Castello, the least touristical. To finish August on a mystical note, I bring you the places I always try to visit in Venice. I think I might have been a travel agent in some past life.

The Republic of Venice fell in 1797, at 1,100 years old, when French troops under Napoleon’s command forced the last doge, the supreme leader, to abdicate. What a feather in the despot’s tricorn must that have been. I chuckle over most art restitution claims these days, in part because around a third of Venice’s art treasures were looted, many sent to the Louvre, now flush with works by Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. Some slipped through grasping French fingers, among them Titian’s Martyrdom of St. Lawrence from 1558, or Larry on the Grill, as graduate students call it. It’s in the church called the I Gesuiti in Cannaregio, not to be confused with the Gesuati in Dorsoduro on the Giudecca canal. That’s a lovely Rococo church with art by Tiepolo and Piazzetta, but follow the scent of burning flesh to see the splendid Titian. It’s that convincing.