Scuola Grande dei Carmini
Why is it significant?
The building in front of you, with its white stone façade of columns and carved masks, belongs to the Scuola Grande dei Carmini, the confraternity of the Carmelite church next door.
Key Facts
| Place | Scuola Grande dei Carmini |
|---|---|
| Address | Campo Santa Margherita, Dorsoduro 2617, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 45.43370, 12.32240 |
| Part of Walk | Art on the Water: Dorsoduro, the Accademia and the Zattere in Venice |
| Generated | Generated |
The building in front of you, with its white stone façade of columns and carved masks, belongs to the Scuola Grande dei Carmini, the confraternity of the Carmelite church next door. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a confraternity like this was a club, a charity and a status symbol all at once, and its members wanted their hall to say so. From the outside it is handsome. Upstairs, it is something else entirely.
The Carmelites spread a devotion to the scapular, two small pieces of brown cloth worn over the shoulders, said to have been given by the Virgin to an English Carmelite, Simon Stock, in a vision. Whoever wore it, the belief went, would be protected in the hour of death. The confraternity that kept this devotion grew rich enough to rebuild its headquarters in the second half of the seventeenth century, with a façade usually attributed to Baldassare Longhena.
Then, in the 1740s, the brothers hired the most fashionable painter in Europe, Giambattista Tiepolo, to decorate the ceiling of the upper hall. In the central canvas the Virgin appears to Simon Stock and hands him the scapular, carried by angels against a sky of pale gold, with figures tumbling at the edges as if they might fall into the room. Climb the grand staircase, under its stucco cherubs and garlands, and see it for yourself.
What makes the Carmini special is that it still feels lived in. Many Venetian confraternities were dissolved in Napoleon's time and their treasures scattered across museums and sales rooms. The Carmini kept its building and its decoration together, and an archconfraternity still looks after it today. You are not visiting a gallery, but the meeting rooms of a brotherhood almost three and a half centuries old in this place.
Step out of the door and turn the corner. In front of you opens the long, irregular Campo Santa Margherita, the living room of Dorsoduro.