San Pantalon: Fumiani's Ceiling
Why is it significant?
Here is another church with a bare brick face, unfinished like so many in Venice, at the edge of a small campo by the canal. Go in, walk to the middle of the nave, and look up. Then try to work out where the building ends and the painting begins.
Key Facts
| Place | San Pantalon: Fumiani's Ceiling |
|---|---|
| Address | Campo San Pantalon, Dorsoduro, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 45.43570, 12.32470 |
| Part of Walk | Art on the Water: Dorsoduro, the Accademia and the Zattere in Venice |
| Generated | Generated |
Here is another church with a bare brick face, unfinished like so many in Venice, at the edge of a small campo by the canal. Go in, walk to the middle of the nave, and look up. Then try to work out where the building ends and the painting begins.
The ceiling of San Pantalon is one of the largest painted canvas ceilings in the world. Gian Antonio Fumiani worked on it for about twenty-four years, from 1680 to 1704, on dozens of canvases fitted together to cover the whole vault. He painted false architecture, columns, arches and balustrades rising higher and higher, so that the real roof seems to dissolve into a sky full of figures.
The subject is the life and martyrdom of Saint Pantaleon, a doctor from Asia Minor who, the tradition says, treated the poor without payment and was executed under the emperor Diocletian. His patients loved him, the emperors did not. Fumiani shows his glory: the saint carried up into heaven through clouds packed with angels, in a perspective that only truly works from the centre of the nave.
And then the legend. The story goes that when Fumiani finally finished, he stepped back on the scaffolding to admire his work, lost his footing and fell to his death, his masterpiece the last thing he ever saw. It is a wonderful tale and almost certainly untrue, because Fumiani lived on for several more years and died in 1710. But guides have been telling it for generations, and it is far too good to stop now.
Before you leave, look for a quieter treasure in a side chapel: Paolo Veronese's Saint Pantaleon healing a boy, one of the last paintings he made, in 1587. Then step outside and walk east for a couple of minutes, towards the Grand Canal, where a great Gothic palace stands at the bend.