Chiesa di San Moisè

Scrumptious icing flourishes of carved-stone ornament across the 1660s facade make this church appear positively lickable, though 19th-century architecture critic John Ruskin found its wedding-cake appearance indigestible: ‘one of the basest examples of the basest schools of the Renaissance’, gagged the outspoken advocate for spare Venetian Gothic. This may seem a tad excessive, but from an engineering perspective Ruskin had a point: several of the facade statues had to be removed in the 19th century to prevent the facade from collapsing under their combined weight. The remaining statuary by Flemish sculptor Heinrich Meyring (aka Merengo in Italian) includes scant devotional works, but a sycophantic number of tributes to the Fini family of generous church patrons. Still, compared with the naked, full-frontal Fascist facade of the Bauer Hotel beside it, San Moisé’s exuberant partisanship seems much more palatable. Among the scene-stealing works inside are Tintoretto’s The Washing of the Feet, in the sanctuary to the left of the main altar, and Palma il Giovane’s The Supper, on the right side of the church.