Angelo San Raffaele, Baroque church in Dorsoduro district, Venice, Italy
Angelo San Raffaele is a brick church in the Dorsoduro neighborhood of Venice, built on a Greek cross plan with its facade facing a narrow canal. The interior is covered with ceiling paintings, painted organ doors, and altarpieces that line the walls from end to end.
A church is said to have stood on this site since the 7th century, though the current building was raised after several fires destroyed earlier structures. Work carried out in the 17th century gave the building the Baroque form it has today.
The painted organ doors inside the church show scenes from the story of Tobias and the archangel Raphael, after whom the church is named. These panels, attributed to the Venetian painter Giandomenico Tiepolo, are one of the few cases where an organ case itself becomes the main artwork visitors come to see.
The church sits in the quieter western part of Dorsoduro, one of the less-visited corners of Venice, so you can usually visit without large crowds around you. The building can be walked around completely from the outside, which is rare for a church in this city.
Natural light inside the church is filtered through orange mesh curtains hung over the windows, giving the whole space a warm, almost amber tone that you do not find in other Venetian churches. This simple addition changes how the paintings and the plasterwork read in the light.
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