Churches of Venice :: Padua

Eremitani Piazza Eremitani
History Built from 1276 and, like the previous church on the site, built by the mendicant order of Augustinian Hermits and dedicated to the Apostle saints Philip and James. The church is known as the Eremitani after their adjoining monastery, which now houses the municipal art gallery and the Scrovegni chapel ticket office. Work was completed in 1306 with Fra Giovanni degli Eremitani's ceiling and façade. The Augustinians left following suppression by Napoleonic in 1806 . The church reopened as a parish church in 1808, with the complex becoming a military barracks, called the Gattamelata barracks. The church and former monastery were badly damaged by a stick of bombs on the 11th March 1944 carried out by the US 15th Air Force and targeting the railway and goods yard. Heavy damage saw the upper façade, the ceiling and parts of the apse end completely destroyed, including the Dotto and Ovetari chapels. Much restoration work followed, directed by Ferdinando Forlati. Exterior The façade was added in 1306, with the church consecrated in 1435. The loggia is later. The side entrance is known as the Door of the Months as it has four panels attached to its pillars by sculptor Niccolò Baroncelli from 1422, consisting of 12 reliefs depicting allegories of the months. Interior The nave Coming through the door in the façade the church presents huge rectangular vista free of columns and with banded red, white a yellow brick walls. The ribbed ceiling of 1306 is by Fra Giovanni degli Eremitani, using timbers from the old wooden ceiling left over after the construction of his new ceiling of the Palazzo della Ragione, given to him by a grateful city. A guidebook of the late 19th century (by Augustus J. C. Hare) reports the the ceiling was at that time painted blue and white, spoiling 'what would otherwise be a striking and beautiful building'. The church houses the matching and protruding Gothic tombs of Jacopo II da Carrara (near the beginning of the left wall) and (at the beginning of the right hand wall opposite) Ubertino da Carrara (see photo right), both were members of the 14th-century dynasty of rulers of Padua, and both tombs are the work by Andriolo de Santi. Under Jacopo's sarcophagus is inscribed the sixteen verses in Latin written to his friend by Petrarch. Both tombs were originally in Sant'Agostino, a church which was demolished in 1819. Further along the left wall are two renaissance altarpieces with no altars, from the same demolished church. Also on this wall is the sandy-coloured monument of 1546 to Marco Mantova Benavides, a renowned 16th century humanist, jurist and collector of art and antiquities, which has recently been restored. It is by Bartolomeo Ammanati and is made from yellow Nanto stone with marble figures - Labour and Patience either side of the sarcophagus, with Benavides above, flanked by Time and Fame, and Immortality over the top. Further along on the left are two large Nanto-stone architectural and polychrome terracotta sculptural altarpieces. The first is called the Dossale della Madonna and the five figures may be the work of Andrea Riccio; the other is the Dossale di San Nicola da Tolentino, with three figures by Domenico Boccalaro. Along the right hand side are four small chapels, the first one is the chapel of the Tebaldo Cortellieri who died in 1370, dedicated to Saint Augustine. It was redecorated in the 17th century but still contains traces of frescos by Giusto de' Menabuoi from around 1370, his first work in Padua, depicting Saint Augustine with the Virtues and the Liberal Arts. The chapel was commissioned by Traversina, the mother of Tebaldo who had been employed by Francesco (il Vecchio) Carrara as a judge and diplomat. The second chapel is dedicated to Saint Anthony Abbot and features very damaged frescoes by Guariento, the Paduan painter who also frescoed the presbytry here. In the forth there's a Head of Christ by him (?) on the underside of the arch, all that remains of a Flagellation, and there's a Virgin and Child Enthroned over the altar by Altichiero. The east end The Giottesque frescoes in The Presbytery (see photo below right and detail of Santa Giustina nearer right) are by Guariento di Arpo, a Paduan painter who became a kind of court artist to the Carrara, going on to provide panel paintings and frescoes for the Carrara Palace. He has other frescoes here, and some painted on the wall around the tomb of Doge Giovanni Dolfin in San Zanipolo in Venice, and the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Doge's Palace c.1365, the first time a painter not in the Venetian Painter's Guild had been given such a prestigious commission. This last work, including a large Paradise, were seriously damaged in the 1577 fire but discovered in 1903 under Tintoretto's Paradiso. The left wall here in the apse has his four panels showing Scenes from the Life of Saint Philip and two (at the bottom) Scenes from the Life of Saint Augustine. Below the narrative paintings are allegorical personifications of The Seven Planets and The Seven Ages of Man. The scenes on the right wall and vault were also destroyed in the bombing. They included a Christ Enthroned with Saints and scenes from the Lives of Saints James the Less and Philip, and have now been replaced with Guariento's earlier Coronation of the Virgin (see below) and his Portraits of Ubertino and Jacopo da Carrara of 1351, three detached fresco fragments which were over the latter's tombs (now in this church by the entrance) when they were in the (now demolished) church of Sant'Agostino, and initially when they were moved here. (Although they didn't look entirely convincing in that position - see c.1912 photo below). The crucifix over the high altar is by the Venetian Nicoletto Semitecolo from 1367. To the left of the presbytery is the Sanguinacci family chapel decorated on the right wall by Giusto de' Manabuoi in 1373 (so an early work) with a Virgin and Child, Saints and Donor. The donor might be the German soldier Heinrich Spisser, who died in September 1373 in the employ of Francesco il Vecchio Carrara. (But some sources say that this Giusto-decorated chapel was destroyed in the 1944 bombing.) Over this fresco is another, a slightly earlier (1340s) Virgin and Saints by the anonymous Maestro del Coro Scrovegni. The two chapels to the right of the presbytery are the Ovetari and Dotto Chapels - see below. Lost art Very many damaged fragments of a fresco scheme of scenes from the Life of Christ (of the early 14th century) for a chapel of the cloister here by Pietro and Guiliano da Rimini are now in the room with the Giotto Crucifix in the Civic Museum next door. There's also a damaged fragment of a fresco of Saint Augustine by an anonymous artist from the Veneto in the same museum. A plaster cast of a relief showing the Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic, Peter Martyr, John the Baptist and James the Greater is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The terracotta original (the Pala Ovetari) from 1448/50, by Giovanni di Francesco da Pisa, with traces of paint and gilding, is still in the Ovetari Chapel here, but following the 1944 bombing the cast is in better condition. A short sad story On Christmas Eve 1585 the body of Vittoria Accorambuoni, the beautiful niece of Pope Sixtus V, lay in state in this church, with the body of Flaminio, her younger brother. They had been murdered the day before by Prince Luigi Orsini. An angry mob of Paduans later besieged the Prince's palace and, having forced him to surrender, he was strangled in prison. Opening times Monday - Friday: 7.30 - 12.30 & 3.30-7.00 Saturday, Sunday and Holidays: 9.00 - 12.30 & 4.00-8.00		A photo from the 1950s/60s
The apse and the Ovetari Chapel before the bombing - a photograph from a guidebook of 1912. After the bombing.
The Ovetari and Dotto Chapels and the bombing
The chapel of Saints James and Christopher (The Ovetari Chapel) in the right transept, containing early frescoes by Mantegna, was mostly destroyed by American bombing on the 11th of March 1944, the monastery having been used as a barracks, which made it a target, although the main target of the long 1943-45 bombing campaign had been the railway marshalling yard. The air raid took place around 11.30 in the morning and by 2.00 in the afternoon students from the Art School were picking fragments of the frescoes out of the rubble. The original contract, signed by Mantagna's brother because the boy was only 17 and hence underage, also included Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni d'Alemagna from Venice and the Paduan sculptor Nicolo Pizolò, who was Mantegna's friend and partner and had been Donatello's assistant. The Venetian team had been commissioned to fresco the right wall, main cross vault and entrance arch of this, the funerary chapel of notary Antonio Ovetari, an active patron at the Santo, by his widow Imperatrice Forzaté. But, after the death of Giovanni d'Alemagna in 1450, Vivarini quit, maybe because he was less skilled in fresco technique than Giovanni, by which time only the vault, with the Evangelists, had been completed (see the black and white photo of the vault taken before destruction above). Three more painters were employed, from Emilia-Romagna and the Marches - Ansuino da Forli, Giovanni di Girolamo da Camerino and Bono da Ferrara, but following the death of Pizzolo in 1454, from wounds sustained during a quarrel, they quit too. Bona da Ferrara, a pupil of Pisanello, did paint and sign a fresco of Saint Christopher Bearing the Christ Child for the Ovetari Chapel in 1451, but it too was destroyed in 1944. A black and white photo (see left) is all that remains. So Mantegna ended up painting most of the chapel, between 1448 and 1457. His frescoes have been partially reconstructed and the photograph (see right) of the right-hand wall of the chapel, depicting The Life of Saint Christopher, shows the painted restored sections and the monochrome areas taken from old photographs. The two panels at the bottom survived through having been removed to Venice decades before the bombing to protect them from damp. The coloured photograph (see above right) is a pre-war image. The Assumption of the Virgin, frescoed on the altar wall by Mantegna, incurred the dissatisfaction of Ovetari's widow for not having the full compliment of apostles. She sued Mantegna but the case was dismissed by the arbitrator, citing the 'great art' of the conception. The terracotta Pala Ovetari, the altarpiece in the chapel, is a relief showing the Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic, Peter Martyr, John the Baptist, James the Greater, Christopher and Anthony Abbot from 1448/49, by Nicolo Pizolò and Giovanni da Pisa, both assistants to Donatello at the Santo. It has traces of paint and gilding, but following the 1944 bombing it too needed considerable reconstruction and the plaster cast in the V&A's plaster court in London, made in 1869, is in much better condition (see above). Mantegna was involved with this work too, but his contribution is thought to be just the provision of the design. Between the Ovetari chapel and the apse is the Dotto chapel, which had an early Coronation of the Virgin by Altichiero, (see photo below) but this work was also destroyed in 1944. On the right wall is the funeral monument of Francesco Dotto.