Monastic and Convent Life as a City Phenomenon

In the visual arts, in historiographical writing, as well as in literary text, the image of the church recurs constantly as a distinctive feature of civic identity. By counting more than ninety sacred buildings at the turn of the sixteenth century, Venice was ahead of the game. From Fra’ Paolino’s Chronologia Magna (1323-29) to Marc’Antonio Sabellico De Situ Urbis Venetae (1491), ecclesiastical monuments mark the city’s geography, as well as its celebratory itineraries. Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View breaks with this long tradition of “sacred topography” to depict monastic and convent communities as an integral part of Venetian social and economic life. Nearly spying beyond the impermeable spiritual walls, he captures the exigencies of the religious time, as well as its intimate relationship with the city. The abundance of orderly orchards, vegetable and rose gardens, and rows of vineyard that frames the precincts of San Giorgio Maggiore, San Francesco delle Vigne or San Giobbe recall us of the religious spaces as a city’s nurse. The wide range of accommodation facilities (docks, boat’s shelters, and cisterns) that barely show up in the maze of winding streets and canals elucidate the clergy involvement in the everyday life activities. From Sant’Andrea della Zirada to the monasteries of San Domenico and Sant’Antonio di Castello, dozens of strips of unsolidified soil and wooden piling disclose the adamantly efforts made by ecclesiastic communities to move the civic borders toward the lagoon. Founding purposes were no longer the driving force in religious community’s drainage activities. Wholesomeness, aesthetic needs, as well as profitable investments were the new defining coordinates for the expansion. In the View of Venice religious life is far away from the topos of a spiritual and secluded world. Rather, it is the representation of a dynamic force that actively shapes the urban fabric.