SHADES OF BEAUTY

Discover how Venice’s unique allure was to influence some of Italy’s greatest Renaissance painters on a private tour of the Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari and the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

Inspired perhaps by the city’s magical mix of water, light and stone, its shimmering canals and the sparkling golden mosaics inside St. Mark’s Basilica, the artists of the Venetian School of painting – a distinctive artistic style that thrived in Venice between the 15th and 17th centuries – are known for their astonishing, ground-breaking and sensuous use of colour. Brilliant hues, dynamic compositions and psychological insight characterise the works of these masters whose sense of enjoyment and lust for life spill out of the canvas.

The Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari is one of Venice’s largest and most remarkable religious complexes. First built by the frari – meaning brothers – of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor in the 13th century, the church underwent major renovation work in the 14th and 15th centuries when it acquired its Gothic layout. Today the austere, bare facade conceals some of Venice’s best-loved painted masterpieces. Your guide will point out the church’s major highlights and illustrate the lives, painterly language and extraordinary artistic careers of their celebrated producers.

You will admire Titian’s glorious Assumption of the Virgin, completed in 1518 and described more than two centuries later by Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova as “the most beautiful painting in the world”. Hanging over the main altar, this colossal oil on wood is indeed indisputably one of the finest examples of Venetian Renaissance painting and strikes the onlooker with its sharp contrast of light and shadow, masterful use of a rich palette and intense emotional expressiveness. Among the gems that you will have the opportunity to admire inside what is indeed a treasure chest are also Titian’s Pala Pesaro, Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna and Child with Saints, Bartolomeo Vivarini’s Triptych of St. Mark as well as Donatello’s wooden sculpture of St. John the Baptist.

The largest collection of paintings by Jacopo Tintoretto is preserved within the walls of the Great School of San Rocco, originally the seat of a confraternity of wealthy Venetian citizens founded in 1478 and named after the venerated St. Roch, who protected the faithful from sickness and the plague. Between 1564 and 1587 Tintoretto and his pupils were entrusted with the decoration of three halls of the complex – the Sala dell’Albergo, Sala Terrena and Sala Superiore – with scenes from the Old and New Testaments. More than sixty canvases depict the story of the Bible, from the Fall to the Redemption, and stand out for their audacious compositions, rapid brushstrokes and dramatic chiaroscuro effects. Listen as your guide takes you through the sacred sequence and explains why this extraordinary painting cycle is known today as “the Sistine Chapel of Venice”.