San Simeone Piccolo
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The church of San Simeone Piccolo (also called San Simeone e Giuda) is a noted landmark in the sestiere of Santa Croceof Venice. In part, it is memorable, because from across the Grand Canal it faces the railroad terminal serving as entrypoint for most visitors to the city.
Built during the years 1718-38 by Giovanni Antonio Scalfarotto (1690-1764); this church shows the emerging eclecticism of neoclassical architecture. It accumulates academic architectural quotations, much like the contemporaneous Karlskirche in Vienna. Wittkower in his monograph, acknowledges San Simeone is modeled on the Pantheon with a temple-front pronaos, on the other hand, the peaked dome recalls Longhena's more embellished and prominent Salute church. The centralized circular church design and the metal dome recalls byzantine models and San Marco, though the numerous centrifugal chapels are characteristic of Post-Tridentine churches.
Ultimately, this was one of the last, if not the last church, built in the Republic of Venice, built in one of its poorer sestieri. Today, despite the confused concatenation of styles, and its present, characteristically Venetian, rusty, and mildewed state, San Simeone e Giuda is as an apt introduction to the centuries of glorious Venetian architecture.
The pediment of the entrance has a marble relief "Il martirio dei due santi titolari" ("The Martyrization of the Saints" by Francesco Penso, known as “il Cabianca”. Saint Simon was apparently the martyred cousin of Christ, martyred as a jew by the Romans.
[edit] References
- Rudolf Wittkower (1986). in Pelican History of Art: Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750, 387-88.
