San Sebastiano Site Features

Antonio Abbondi, called Scarpagnino, rebuilt the church from 1506 into a shape that turned out to be ideal for what happened to it later: a single unbroken nave with no side aisles, no columns and no transept, ending in a raised presbytery under a small dome. There is nothing structural anywhere to interrupt a ceiling.

That ceiling is coffered -- divided into deep compartments by carved and gilded ribs -- and the compartments are not decoration around the paintings but the frames of them. Veronese's three Esther panels and the smaller fields around them were painted to fit an existing grid, which is why the scheme reads as one designed object rather than a set of pictures hung in a room.

The barco, the raised nuns' choir running across the west end above the entrance, is the other feature that shaped the decoration. It gave Veronese a second storey of wall to work on and gave the church a viewing gallery at ceiling height, and its underside and parapet are painted as thoroughly as anything below.

The facade, in plain Istrian stone with a simple pedimented front, is deliberately modest and gives no indication of the interior -- a pattern this church shares with several of Venice's richest painted rooms.

Veronese's coffered ceiling, telling the story of Esther across three panels, is the centerpiece, but the sacristy's Old Testament scenes, the organ shutters, and the presbytery's altarpieces are just as much a part of the same unified decorative scheme -- a rare case of one artist's vision carried through an entire church rather than a single commissioned work.

San Sebastiano stands on the Rio di San Basilio in western Dorsoduro, a few minutes from the Zattere and close to the western edge of the city.

The quarter is one of the quietest in central Venice, and one of the least altered. Palazzo Ariani and the church of Angelo Raffaele are a short walk west, San Nicolo dei Mendicoli beyond them, and the whole area retains the plain, working character it had when Veronese was living in it.

The university has spread into the buildings alongside the church, which now houses part of Ca' Foscari's library -- so the campo carries students rather than visitors, and empties completely outside term.

The Zattere, two minutes south, is the reason to combine the visit with a walk: a long unbroken quay facing the Giudecca Canal, wide, sunlit and open, which is a complete change of scale from the enclosed calli that lead to the church door.