Chiesa di Santa Corona

Santa Corona is Vicenza's Gothic sermon in stone: founded in 1261 by the Dominicans to enshrine a thorn from the Crown of Thorns, it now belongs to the civic museums. Bellini, Veronese and Palladio's Valmarana Chapel join an international-Gothic chapel and a carved crypt choir in the church's artistic heritage.

Why it matters

Few Italian churches let you move so cleanly from relic legend to Renaissance masterpieces under one roof. Santa Corona was begun in 1261 after King Louis IX of France gave a thorn from the Crown of Thorns to Bartholomew of Breganze, the blessed bishop of Vicenza, and the Dominican order raised the church to house it. Suppressed in the Napoleonic era, the complex passed to the city, and the church now forms part of the Musei Civici di Vicenza. For a traveller mapping Palladio's city, it also holds the funerary chapel the architect designed in 1576 for Antonio Valmarana, and the place where, by tradition, Palladio himself was first buried in 1580.

What to notice

The tall Gothic interior is austere, with brick piers and little ornament; the paintings and sculpture concentrate at the altars. Giovanni Bellini's late "Baptism of Christ" occupies the Garzadori altar in the left aisle. Paolo Veronese's "Adoration of the Magi", painted in the 1570s for the church, hangs nearby. Lorenzo Veneziano's "Madonna of the Stars" and Bartolomeo Montagna's altarpiece of the Magdalene with saints trace the Venetian line across generations. In the Thiene chapel, early fifteenth-century frescoes by Michelino da Besozzo represent International Gothic. Lorenzo da Bologna rebuilt the presbytery and crypt in the late fifteenth century; the crypt preserves Pier Antonio dell'Abate's carved wooden choir and a sculpted Redeemer group by Girolamo Pittoni with Saint Louis and Blessed Bartholomew, the relic's donor pair. Palladio designed the Valmarana Chapel in 1576.

Context and history

The thorn arrived in Vicenza in the mid-thirteenth century, and the Dominican church built for it became one of the city's principal preaching and burial churches, enriched by its confraternities and leading families. The reliquary cycle of paintings grew accordingly: Bellini's Baptism is usually dated to 1500-1502, at the end of the painter's career, while Veronese's Adoration of the Magi belongs to his mature Vicentine decades. Lorenzo da Bologna's presbytery modernised the east end in the second half of the fifteenth century. After the Dominican suppression of the Napoleonic period the buildings went to the Comune, and the former convent next door eventually became the Museo Naturalistico Archeologico. Management of the church by the civic museums from recent decades regularised visits and conservation, including a multilingual digital guide now offered at the entrance.