This magnificent church was built between 1481 and 1489 to house Nicolò di Pietro's Madonna icon after the painting began miraculously weeping in its outdoor shrine. Pietro and Tullio Lombardo's design of the church used marble scavenged from slag heaps in San Marco and favored the human scale of radically new Renaissance architecture in place of the grandiose Gothic status-quo.
The father-and-son team creatively repurposed polychrome marble that was originally plundered from Egypt and Syria for use on the Basilica di San Marco, but was surplus to requirements. Note the fine scrollwork capitols and Venetian fish-scale patterns that frame the veined marble panels. If you look closely at the columns on either side of the sanctuary, you'll spot angels and mermaids carved by Tullio Lombardo.
The lofty vaulted interior and domed apse seem effortless, but they're marvels of Renaissance engineering, achieved without the Gothic device of buttressing. In a prime example of Renaissance humanism, Pier Maria Pennacchi filled each of the 50 wooden ceiling panels with a bright-eyed portrait of a saint or prophet dressed as a Venetian, like a class photo in a school yearbook.
