Chiesa di San Martino

Beside the Arsenale stands the parish church of San Martino, historically associated with the shipyard community. Rebuilt from 1546 to a design by Jacopo Sansovino, it was rotated through ninety degrees and now has a square plan, a painted ceiling by Jacopo Guarana and the tomb of Doge Francesco Erizzo.

Why it matters

Chorus describes San Martino's foundation as a tradition dating to the seventh or eighth century, before the Republic of Venice. From 810, when government settled nearby, the buildings were renewed in a Veneto-Byzantine form that the church retained until the sixteenth century. Sansovino's rebuilding rotated the church through ninety degrees and reshaped the surrounding space. Regional and national catalogues attribute the refacimento to Sansovino and date the fabric from the tenth to seventeenth centuries. Its square plan, single nave, corner chapels and uniform top light give it an unusual geometry; the church is closely tied to the Arsenale district.

What to notice

Domenico Bruni painted architectural perspectives across the flat ceiling, leading toward Jacopo Guarana's Gloria di San Martino, in which the saint is received into heaven. Fabio Canal frescoed the presbytery vault with the Sacrifice of Abraham and the Sacrifice of Melchisedec. The right wall carries Doge Francesco Erizzo's funerary monument, designed by Mattia Carnero in 1633. The organ has a Nacchini case reworked by Gaetano Callido; Gerolamo Santacroce's 1549 Cena di Cristo appears on its parapet. The neighbouring oratory of the Scuola di San Martino preserves a fifteenth-century relief of Saint Martin sharing his cloak with a beggar, emblem of the Arsenale caulkers who gathered there.

Context and history

San Martino's dedication is to Martin of Tours. Chorus records its consecration in 932, while its medieval jurisdiction passed through the patriarchate of Grado before the Patriarchate of Venice was established in 1451. Sansovino's campaign, begun in 1546, gave the parish its present orientation and square plan as the districts around the Arsenale were being reshaped. Later fittings include Bruni's ceiling perspectives, Guarana's central painting and Canal's presbytery frescoes. The parish survived the Napoleonic suppressions and remains part of the San Marco-Castello vicariate.