Lot Essay
'Come hither that you may see something great and singular ... a temple that not only evokes antiquity but actually surpasses it'. So wrote the Venetian humanist Paolo Delfin of this church on the cemetery island of San Michele, begun by Mario Coducci in 1469, and derived from Alberti's Tempio Malatestiano at Rimini. With its severely classical faade capped by a semi-circular pediment, it was the first Renaissance church in Venice and was further embellished in 1530, when Guglielmo Bergamasco's hexagonal Cappella Emiliana was added to the side.