Chiesa di San Giobbe

At the mouth of the Cannaregio canal, the Church of San Giobbe preserves one of Venice’s earliest Renaissance interiors. Pietro Lombardo led its transformation for a Franciscan community, and the building retains chapels, tombs and works that recall both its charitable origins and its artistic history.

Why it matters

In 1378, the priest Giovanni Contarini built a home for the poor beside an oratory dedicated to Saint Job. The Franciscans later established a Gothic church and convent on the site. In the fifteenth century the church became associated with the preaching of Bernardino of Siena and was rebuilt in Renaissance style with funding from Doge Cristoforo Moro. It was reconsecrated in 1493 with a dual dedication to Saints Job and Bernardino. The building combines its fourteenth-century origins with the Renaissance forms of the fifteenth-century rebuilding.

What to notice

The sequence of sculpted and architectural elements centres on the presbytery: an arch with an Annunciation, a further arch with Gabriel and the Prophets, and a cupola with the Four Evangelists. The Martini Chapel has a ceiling of majolica attributed to Luca della Robbia. In the Contarini chapel, the Nativity of Christ by Girolamo Savoldo is displayed in the original fourteenth-century oratory. The sacristy, dating to 1500, retains its cabinets and painted ceiling, together with Antonio Vivarini’s triptych of the Annunciation with Saint Anthony of Padua and the Archangel Michael. The grave of Doge Cristoforo Moro is set into the floor.

Context and history

Giovanni Bellini’s San Giobbe Altarpiece was painted for the church’s second altar on the right and remained there until its removal for conservation in 1812; it was transferred to the Gallerie dell’Accademia in 1815. The museum dates the work between 1478 and the late 1480s and describes it as a turning point in Venetian altarpiece painting. Its Lombardesque stone frame remains in the church. San Giobbe continues to preserve other works by Bonifacio de’ Pitati, Savoldo, Vivarini and Previtali, as well as an eighteenth-century organ probably made by Callido.