Scuola Grande di San Rocco

Few rooms anywhere are so completely the work of one painter. On the upper floor of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, walls and ceiling are covered edge to edge with dark, glinting canvases by Jacopo Tintoretto, figures twisting out of shadow into sudden light, while carved wooden panels run along the lower walls. The cycle is often compared to the Sistine Chapel, and for Venice it plays a similar role: a single artist's vision of the biblical story, from the Fall of Adam and Eve to the Redemption, laid out across an entire building.

The scuola was the seat of a lay confraternity founded in 1478 and dedicated to Saint Roch, invoked as a protector against plague, whose relics lie in the adjacent church of San Rocco. Its members were wealthy Venetian citizens, and their headquarters, begun in the 1510s beside the great Franciscan church of the Frari, passed through the hands of several architects: Pietro Bon, then Sante Lombardo, then Antonio Abbondi, known as Scarpagnino, who shaped much of the interior and the grand staircase, and finally Giangiacomo dei Grigi, who completed the building in 1560. Like other Venetian scuole it consists of two great halls stacked one above the other, with the smaller Sala dell'Albergo, the boardroom of the confraternity's governing body, opening off the upper one.

Tintoretto received his first commission here in 1564 with the oval ceiling of Saint Roch in glory, and over the next two decades, working with his son Domenico and assistants, he filled all three rooms. The Albergo holds the Passion scenes, crowned by the Crucifixion of 1565, a crowded canvas more than eleven metres wide. The ceiling of the upper hall shows Old Testament episodes such as the Bronze Serpent, the Fall of Manna and Moses striking water from the rock, while its walls carry the life of Christ, from the Adoration of the Shepherds to the Ascension. The ground-floor hall is devoted to the Virgin, from the Annunciation and the Flight into Egypt to her Assumption. The scuola was also a patron of music: Giovanni Gabrieli served as its organist, and in 1958 Stravinsky conducted the premiere of his Threni here. Venice itself, built on the islands of its lagoon, was for centuries the capital of a maritime republic.

Getting there

The scuola stands on Campo San Rocco in the San Polo district, beside the Frari basilica, about 0.6 km from the centre of the historic city and within walking distance of Venezia Santa Lucia railway station. The nearest airport is Venice Marco Polo (VCE), about 8 km away across the lagoon.