Sir William Russell Flint (1880–1969), “The Palace with Green Posts, Venice”, watercolor on paper, ca. 1928. Private collection.
The Legacy
The Ex-Chiesa dell’Abbazia della Misericordia, headquarters of theEtniaHouse of Arts, was founded in 939 in the Romanesque-Byzantine style. Part of a larger complex, it included a monastery, a cemetery, and a hospice; the oldest in the city of Venice. At the time, the church was known as “Santa Maria del Valverde”, a name inspired by its location: a grassy island surrounded by sandbanks and shallow canals in the northern area of Cannaregio.
In the 14th century, amid a moment of intense urbanization, the island of Valverde was integrated into the urban fabric and underwent significant developments, such as the founding of theScuola Vecchia della Misericordia. In those years, the church was largely rebuilt and renovated in Gothic style. A number of structural elements from that period have been preserved to this day.
The actual external facade, by contrast, dates from the 17th century. It was commissioned to Clemente Moli, an Italian sculptor collaborator of both Bernini and Longhena, who entirely clad the ancient façade in Istrian marble.
The 18th century saw the monument fall into serious disrepair. In 1828, Pietro Pianton, the new abbot of the abbey, determined to save it, solicited donations and gathered sacred ornaments from other abandoned churches. Yet his efforts went beyond mere restoration; he undertook significant transformations of the church, many of its present-day features dating from that period. Over the years, subsequent rennovation efforts were undertaken, introducing additional Gothic elements to the church’s structure.
The Chiesa dell’Abbazia della Misericordia was officially closed for worship and converted to profane uses on March 28th, 1973.
In 2025, the church became the home ofa new and unique artistic project: EtniaHouse of Arts.
In the 14th century, amid a moment of intense urbanization, the island of Valverde was integrated into the urban fabric and underwent significant developments, such as the founding of theScuola Vecchia della Misericordia. In those years, the church was largely rebuilt and renovated in Gothic style. A number of structural elements from that period have been preserved to this day.
The actual external facade, by contrast, dates from the 17th century. It was commissioned to Clemente Moli, an Italian sculptor collaborator of both Bernini and Longhena, who entirely clad the ancient façade in Istrian marble.
The 18th century saw the monument fall into serious disrepair. In 1828, Pietro Pianton, the new abbot of the abbey, determined to save it, solicited donations and gathered sacred ornaments from other abandoned churches. Yet his efforts went beyond mere restoration; he undertook significant transformations of the church, many of its present-day features dating from that period. Over the years, subsequent rennovation efforts were undertaken, introducing additional Gothic elements to the church’s structure.
The Chiesa dell’Abbazia della Misericordia was officially closed for worship and converted to profane uses on March 28th, 1973.
In 2025, the church became the home ofa new and unique artistic project: EtniaHouse of Arts.
Restoration of La Misericorda<br />Piero Vespignani, lead architect for the restoration
Manfredo Tafuri, the renowned historian of architecture, defined restoration as an antidote born from an awareness of the cruelty of our time.
To restore a building means to try to know those who built before us, to understand the techniques they used and the thoughts they carried. It means asking how they read the world. What was their idea of the sacred. How did they look at a star filled sky, at a natural landscape. What did they believe about the construction of the city, understood as collectivity, identity, political and religious consciousness.
We often tend to think of restoration as the translation of certain established techniques that allow us to recover specific surfaces, whether painted, plastered, carved in wood, or shaped in moulded marble.
It is not so, or rather, it is not only this.
To restore means to enter into dialogue with those who, before us, imagined how a house, a temple, or a senate hall should be built. Since these people are no longer here, our only interlocutor is matter. Matter speaks. It tells us how it was worked, how it was covered, fitted, joined, cut. If one has the patience to listen, it tells many other things too, perhaps more than a person could ever report.
The church of the abbazia della Misericordia has told us, and continues to tell us, far more than we had imagined.
Its decorations are largely nineteenth century, and it was known as a church essentially “remade” in the nineteenth century. The many investigations carried out in the archives, and above all the observations on the church’s surfaces, revealed a history far more complex and far more fascinating.
To restore a building means to try to know those who built before us, to understand the techniques they used and the thoughts they carried. It means asking how they read the world. What was their idea of the sacred. How did they look at a star filled sky, at a natural landscape. What did they believe about the construction of the city, understood as collectivity, identity, political and religious consciousness.
We often tend to think of restoration as the translation of certain established techniques that allow us to recover specific surfaces, whether painted, plastered, carved in wood, or shaped in moulded marble.
It is not so, or rather, it is not only this.
To restore means to enter into dialogue with those who, before us, imagined how a house, a temple, or a senate hall should be built. Since these people are no longer here, our only interlocutor is matter. Matter speaks. It tells us how it was worked, how it was covered, fitted, joined, cut. If one has the patience to listen, it tells many other things too, perhaps more than a person could ever report.
The church of the abbazia della Misericordia has told us, and continues to tell us, far more than we had imagined.
Its decorations are largely nineteenth century, and it was known as a church essentially “remade” in the nineteenth century. The many investigations carried out in the archives, and above all the observations on the church’s surfaces, revealed a history far more complex and far more fascinating.
The complex of the abbazia della Misericordia was founded in 939 under the name Santa Maria di Valverde. The first church had Byzantine forms. Imagine an island detached from the city of that time, a green clearing with the church, a hospital, a shelter for the poor, a cemetery, and the convent of the friars. The greatest transformations of the complex took place at the end of the thirteenth century, when the island was connected to the rest of the city, in the sixteenth century when it was entirely redecorated, in the sixteenth century when the stone façade was built, and, as mentioned, in the nineteenth century, when a radical reconstruction of the church was long assumed.
When we began work, the first surprises came from seeing the roof up close. The entire wooden structure was assembled with interlocking joints, with astonishing intelligence. The monk of the truss, the central vertical element, has an extension that fits perfectly into the prepared hole in the tie beam, the horizontal element, sealed by an asymmetrical wooden peg and held by a pennola, a triangular section of wood driven between the two elements. This technique is called tenon and mortise, widespread throughout Europe especially between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Every bearing point, every contact between the wooden elements of the roof, hides a joint. Invisible.
To an inexperienced eye, everything seems simply laid one upon another, without any apparent connection. A miraculous balance that makes the structure extraordinarily slender and light.
The analysis of other construction details confirmed the perfect consistency of the whole roof, the carving of the corbels, the stone supports, the metal fastenings.
After specific laboratory analyses, we were able to establish that the roof is far older than previously believed. It is not nineteenth century. It dates to the early fourteenth century, built with beams cut from trees that were about 250 years old.
When we began work, the first surprises came from seeing the roof up close. The entire wooden structure was assembled with interlocking joints, with astonishing intelligence. The monk of the truss, the central vertical element, has an extension that fits perfectly into the prepared hole in the tie beam, the horizontal element, sealed by an asymmetrical wooden peg and held by a pennola, a triangular section of wood driven between the two elements. This technique is called tenon and mortise, widespread throughout Europe especially between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Every bearing point, every contact between the wooden elements of the roof, hides a joint. Invisible.
To an inexperienced eye, everything seems simply laid one upon another, without any apparent connection. A miraculous balance that makes the structure extraordinarily slender and light.
The analysis of other construction details confirmed the perfect consistency of the whole roof, the carving of the corbels, the stone supports, the metal fastenings.
After specific laboratory analyses, we were able to establish that the roof is far older than previously believed. It is not nineteenth century. It dates to the early fourteenth century, built with beams cut from trees that were about 250 years old.
On the site, once this news spread, there was a great deal of frustration, because we had found no trace of decoration on the trusses earlier than the nineteenth century. Yet from the small signs we did find, we could begin to understand and to imagine the church across the centuries.
In the fourteenth century the walls were plastered and decorated a regalzier, a typical Venetian decoration that imitates brickwork, often with polychromies following the pattern of the masonry. The best known example is the façade of Palazzo Ducale in piazza San Marco, alternating white and pink, although in that case, for the nobility of the building, small marble blocks were used instead of bricks. There was certainly red, and white.
Later, in an early sixteenth century transformation, the church was plastered with a very refined white finish, smooth and made with extremely fine aggregates, and with coloured bands.
In the seventeenth century, when the façade was rebuilt, a white marmorino plaster was applied, a finish widely used in Venice that makes surfaces appear clad in marble.
Curiously, in the nineteenth century, without knowing anything about how the original decoration had been made, they remade the regalzier decoration, the one that exists today.
But the beams, how were they decorated. Monochrome. Polychrome. Figurative or geometric.
We had cleaned and restored all the tie beams of the trusses and there was nothing. Only the last tie beam remained, the one above the altar.
While we were checking work on the marble parts of an altar, we heard a restorer shout, “Come, come, I found it!”
In a stratigraphic test patch on the tie beam of the last truss, a small square where restorers remove the surface layers with brushes or scalpels by a few tenths of a millimetre, we finally saw the original decoration. Two ribbons, one red and one green blue, chase each other as they wrap together around a thin wooden rod.
If I wanted to be romantic, I should say that the church kept its most precious gift for the last truss. But if I put on the clothes of the architect, I must confess that the research we carried out after the discovery confirms that in the fourteenth century it was not rare to have only one decorated truss, precisely the one above the high altar.
The last tie beam, once the first patch was widened, revealed the entire decoration just described, while the intrados, the underside, shows a corbel like pattern interrupted by blue fields that held gilded stars.
In the fourteenth century the walls were plastered and decorated a regalzier, a typical Venetian decoration that imitates brickwork, often with polychromies following the pattern of the masonry. The best known example is the façade of Palazzo Ducale in piazza San Marco, alternating white and pink, although in that case, for the nobility of the building, small marble blocks were used instead of bricks. There was certainly red, and white.
Later, in an early sixteenth century transformation, the church was plastered with a very refined white finish, smooth and made with extremely fine aggregates, and with coloured bands.
In the seventeenth century, when the façade was rebuilt, a white marmorino plaster was applied, a finish widely used in Venice that makes surfaces appear clad in marble.
Curiously, in the nineteenth century, without knowing anything about how the original decoration had been made, they remade the regalzier decoration, the one that exists today.
But the beams, how were they decorated. Monochrome. Polychrome. Figurative or geometric.
We had cleaned and restored all the tie beams of the trusses and there was nothing. Only the last tie beam remained, the one above the altar.
While we were checking work on the marble parts of an altar, we heard a restorer shout, “Come, come, I found it!”
In a stratigraphic test patch on the tie beam of the last truss, a small square where restorers remove the surface layers with brushes or scalpels by a few tenths of a millimetre, we finally saw the original decoration. Two ribbons, one red and one green blue, chase each other as they wrap together around a thin wooden rod.
If I wanted to be romantic, I should say that the church kept its most precious gift for the last truss. But if I put on the clothes of the architect, I must confess that the research we carried out after the discovery confirms that in the fourteenth century it was not rare to have only one decorated truss, precisely the one above the high altar.
The last tie beam, once the first patch was widened, revealed the entire decoration just described, while the intrados, the underside, shows a corbel like pattern interrupted by blue fields that held gilded stars.
