Lazzaro dei Mendicanti. We're all going to be here someday. Maybe I should say we are going to be inside of something like this regardless of our religion, faith, or lack thereof. This is the second-to-last stop for Venetians. It is not really open to tourists and frankly they are out of place here. Most of the time it is dark and gloomy inside appropriate to the setting. The lighting, when it is on, is, well, almost comical, and just barely late 19th Century. However, there is something great about this church. Something indefinable, something historic, and ageless. Built as part of the surrounding hospital—formerly the Scuola of San Marco--the church was originally part of a complex that housed the homeless and poor. Work started in 1601 to a plan by Vicenzo Scamozzi. It was finished in 1631.
Vicenzo Scamozzi
b. Vicenza 1548 - d. Venice 1616
Scamozzi was one from a family of artists, whose father was an architect who settled in Vicenza. Vicenzo spent his first 30 years there, too, studying with his father and working on treatises and architectural projects. He became a prominent architect in the Veneto region in the late 16th to early 17th Century. He completed some of Palladio's projects, and Jacopo Sansovino's works also influenced him. While he continued working with some of Palladio's models, he also made some contributions of his own to the philosophy of architecture. He traveled widely through Italy, working in Rome for a time. He settled in Venice around 1580. Later he traveled to Hungary, Poland, Germany, France, and then to Salzburg in 1603–4 to begin his commission for the new cathedral. Many of his projects, including the Procuratie Nuove in Venice and Salzburg Cathedral, were the victims of local politics and in-fighting; their original designs were altered either during their construction in his lifetime, or when they were completed after his death. He worked on several commissions for private villas in the region, and on the Palazzo Contarini on the Grand Canal.
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