IT WAS FLOODED --
this is the famous acqua alta (high water)!!
The Piazza San Marco is the lowest point in Venice, and as a result during the Acqua Alta the "high water" from storm surges from the Adriatic, or even heavy rain, it is the first to flood.Water pouring into the drains in the Piazza runs directly into the Grand Canal. This is ideal during heavy rain, but during the acqua alta it has the reverse effect, with water from the canal surging up into the Square.
So we splashed around for a while, walked on the elevated planks where we could, and finally decided to leave the square and go to San Rocco.
Scuola di San Rocco
Venice has abundant art treasures. Many cover the walls of the city's galleries, but the best remain in the places they were painted for: the churches and palaces of the Renaissance. I call that "art in situ."
The Scuola Grande di San Rocco, which was founded in the 15th century as a confraternity to assist the citizens in time of plague, is one of the most spectacular, showing masterpieces in their original home.
"Here you will find some of the beautiful works from the painter Tintoretto. His epic canvasses are filled with phantasmagoric light and intense, mystical spirituality. This museum is a dazzling monument to his work — it holds the largest collection of his images anywhere."
In the Frari, the building around the corner, you can look at famous paintings by Titian or Bellini, but neither can prepare you for the savage intensity of the Tintorettos that cover the walls of the Scuola di San Rocco. Titian is sublime, and Bellini is serene, but Tintoretto is somehow the most moving.
From 1564 to 1587 the artist covered the two floors of this building with one of the most important Italian painting cycles ever painted. It tells the story of the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and a host of other Biblical stories. They line the walls of the huge ground floor room you first pass through and are even richer in the upper hall at the top of the grand staircase.
Adoration of the Shepherds
The emotional effect of the artwork here is to transport you back to the world of the people who first saw these paintings. Appreciating these pictures today is a deeply spiritual experience, just as it was 500 years ago.
Henry James, who wrote often in - and of - Venice, wrote this about the Scuola di San Rocco:"Solemn indeed is the place, solemn and strangely suggestive, for the simple reason that we shall scarcely find four walls elsewhere that enclose within a like area an equal quantity of genius. The air is thick with it and dense and difficult to breathe; for it was genius that was not happy, inasmuch as it lacked the art to fix itself forever. It is not immortality that we breathe at the Scuola of San Rocco, but conscious, reluctant mortality."
This series of more than 50 dark and dramatic works took the artist more than 20 years to complete, making this the richest of the many "scuole" that once flourished in Venice.
Upstairs in the Sala dell'Albergo, there is the most notable of the enormous, powerful canvases - The Crucifixion.
The Crucifixion
Among the eight huge, sweeping paintings downstairs — each depicting a scene from the New Testament — The Slaughter of the Innocents is so full of dramatic urgency and energy that the figures seem almost to tumble out of the frame.
The Slaughter of the Innocents
Tourist reviews
GO!!! Even if you're not a fan of Tintoretto, go for the STUNNING wood carvings alone. I was there for an hour and a half this week, and there were never more than four other people in the place, totally incomprehensible as it is certainly a must-see.
I tell anyone who is touring Venice to visit Scuola Of St Rocca. Only for a local introducing me to this part of Venice, I may have left not discovering this. Wonderful.
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