Ognissanti Church, Renaissance church in Dorsoduro district, Venice, Italy.
Ognissanti Church is a Renaissance house of worship in the Dorsoduro district of Venice featuring a three-section facade with a bell tower positioned on its left side. Inside, a single nave runs the length of the structure, with a large gallery reserved for nuns spanning nearly half of the church's interior space.
Construction began in 1505 when Cistercian nuns relocated from Torcello to establish a new religious community in Venice. The building received its consecration in 1586, completing its emergence as a finished Renaissance structure.
The presbytery displays frescoes from 1673, including The Last Supper and The Glory of Paradise, created by Agostino Litterini and Giacomo Grassi.
The church stands inside the perimeter of the Giustinian Hospital complex in Dorsoduro, so access passes through hospital grounds rather than a public street. After the hospital closed in the mid-1990s the building was only partly returned to worship, for patients and recovered people. Expect a working institutional setting rather than a visitor-oriented church.
The frescoes in the apse and chapel vaults were commissioned on 13 March 1673 by Abbess Teodora Sansonio from Agostino Litterini, working with the Bolognese painter Giacomo Grassi. Litterini also painted God the Father and four Virtues in the Michiel family chapel on the left of the presbytery.
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