The Stones of Venice, Volume 2 (of 3), by John Ruskin
2. OUR LADY OF SALVATION.
307 words | Chapter 53
"Santa Maria della Salute," Our Lady of Health, or of Safety, would be a
more literal translation, yet not perhaps fully expressing the force of
the Italian word in this case. The church was built between 1630 and
1680, in acknowledgment of the cessation of the plague;--of course to
the Virgin, to whom the modern Italian has recourse in all his principal
distresses, and who receives his gratitude for all principal
deliverances.
The hasty traveller is usually enthusiastic in his admiration of this
building; but there is a notable lesson to be derived from it, which is
not often read. On the opposite side of the broad canal of the Giudecca
is a small church, celebrated among Renaissance architects as of
Palladian design, but which would hardly attract the notice of the
general observer, unless on account of the pictures by John Bellini
which it contains, in order to see which the traveller may perhaps
remember having been taken across the Giudecca to the Church of the
"Redentore." But he ought carefully to compare these two buildings with
each other, the one built "to the Virgin," the other "to the Redeemer"
(also a votive offering after the cessation of the plague of 1576); the
one, the most conspicuous church in Venice, its dome, the principal one
by which she is first discerned, rising out of the distant sea: the
other, small and contemptible, on a suburban island, and only becoming
an object of interest because it contains three small pictures! For in
the relative magnitude and conspicuousness of these two buildings, we
have an accurate index of the relative importance of the ideas of the
Madonna and of Christ, in the modern Italian mind.
Some further account of this church is given in the final Index to the
Venetian buildings at the close of the third Volume.
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