Restored from 2001 to 2003 with funding from the California Chapter of Save Venice Inc. in honor of Dr. Franklin Murphy.

The church of San Pietro di Castello, located at the far eastern end of Venice, has had a long and important history. The first church dedicated to Saint Peter was constructed on the site in the ninth century. This church became the seat of the Bishop and, between 1451 and the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, of the Patriarch of Venice. In the beginning of the fifteenth century Bishop Marco Lando erected a small Gothic chapel dedicated to All Saints in the original church; he was laid to rest in this chapel after his death in 1425.

With the passing of time, the church was enlarged, restored, and rebuilt several times. The current church was built between 1594 and 1596 by Francesco Smeraldi, following designs by Andrea Palladio; from 1619 onward, construction was undertaken by Girolamo Grapiglia. Almost nothing remains from the original church except the Lando Chapel, which was incorporated into  the new church. The chapel is now a separate structure accessible via a small door in the left nave; it originally opened toward the nave of the old church. This chapel also became a repository for venerated relics from earlier periods and now holds over one thousand years’ worth of art.

The oldest work of art in the chapel is the decorative Roman mosaic embedded in the floor immediately in front of the altar. The carved altar front with a fluted cross, surrounded by a wreath and flanked by two other crosses, dates from the thirteenth century. The mosaic altarpiece, depicting the Madonna and All Saints and signed and dated by Arminio Zuccato in 1575, was executed after a design drawn by Jacopo  Tintoretto. On the floor of the chapel is the tomb of Bishop Marco Lando. Although he died in the fifteenth century, the decorative cover of his tomb, with inlaid marble and the Lando coat of arms, was not completed until the following century.

On the wall opposite the main altar two freestanding Veneto-Byzantine columns, probably from the eleventh century and possibly from the adjacent baptistery, flank a late fifteenth-century bust of the Blessed Lorenzo Giustinian (1381–1456), appointed the first Patriarch of Venice in 1451. The attribution of this bust is not certain, but it may be by an artist in the circle of Antonio Rizzo or Jacopo Bellini.

Some nineteenth-century painted decorative wall motifs also remain, but none of the original wall decoration has been found.

The chapel was restored by conservators from the GRC restoration firm and Dal Carlo restoration firm, with the guidance of project director Emanuela Zucchetta of the Superintendency of Monuments of Venice.

For select projects, conservation dossiers in Italian containing limited textual and photographic documentation may be available for consultation by appointment at the Venice office of Save Venice and the Rosand Library & Study Center. For inquiries, please contact us at venice@savevenice.org.

Various artists
Lando Chapel
Fifth through nineteenth centuries

Chorus Association: Church of San Pietro di Castello

Claudia Kryza-Gersch, “The Lando Chapel in San Pietro di Castello” (2001)