2000 restoration funded in part by Bernadette J. Berger, Save Venice Inc., and The Italian State; 2020 conservation campaign supported by the Immediate Response Fund.

The church of Santi Apostoli has been redesigned and rebuilt many times throughout its history; the building as it appears today dates mostly to a reconstruction undertaken in the mid-1700s. In the late fifteenth century, the architect Mauro Codussi designed a chapel within the church as the private burial site for the powerful Cornaro family. This chapel was probably built in the 1490s, since it is visible in Jacopo de’ Barbari’s woodcut map of Venice, which dates to 1500.

Although the church was rebuilt after Codussi completed the chapel, the chapel itself was never demolished. The clear, coherent style of the Cornaro Chapel is characteristic of Codussi’s architecture, evident in such elements as the round oculus windows that puncture the lunettes of the chapel.

Save Venice has restored all four of what are considered the “great early Renaissance chapels” in Venice, as identified by Save Venice founder John McAndrew in his classic study, Venetian Architecture of the Early Renaissance. In addition to the Cornaro Chapel, these include the Martini Chapel in San Giobbe, the Gussoni Chapel in San Lio, and the Badoer Giustinian Chapel in San Francesco della Vigna.

In addition to Save Venice’s participation in a joint effort to restore the Cornaro Chapel in 2000, the organization also funded crucial conservation efforts of the chapel following the exceptional high tides that struck Venice in November and December 2019, with support from the Immediate Response Fund.

As the Cornaro Chapel it sits at a lower elevation than the eighteenth-century section of the church, it is especially prone to flooding when acqua alta occurs. During the acqua alta that occurred on the evening of November 12, 2019, the second highest in recorded history, the water in the chapel rose to nearly 40 centimeters deep.

The corrosive sea water penetrated the floor, porous masonry, and precious marble decoration in the chapel. In the days and weeks that followed, the dampness continued to rise up the walls, increasing the relative humidity in the chapel and leaving detrimental salt deposits behind. Conservators from the Seres firm continue their efforts to remove the harmful salts that have deposited on the walls and Codussi’s precious Renaissance decoration while securing any deteriorated areas that are at risk of detaching. They will continue to monitor the site to determine what further treatments may be necessary to address the long-term effects that the flooding has had on the chapel.

Mauro Codussi (1440–1504)
Cornaro Chapel
1490s, marble and Istrian stone

Ralph Lieberman, “Some Family Chapels in Renaissance Venice” (2001)

McAndrew, John. Venetian Architecture of the Early Renaissance. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980.