The San Giorgio Monastery (St. George Monastery) is a Benedictine monastery in Venice, Italy, located on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. It stands next to the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, which serves the monastic community. Most of the old monastic buildings currently serve as headquarters of the Cini Foundation.
The monastery was founded in AD 982 following the donation of the island by the Doge Tribuno Memmo in response to a request by the Blessed John Morosini, O.S.B., who wished to establish a monastery there, and who then became the first abbot. Among the first monks of the community which developed there was St. Gerard of Csanád (Hungarian : Szent Gellért) (980-1046), a bishop and martyr who helped establish Christianity in Hungary. He was murdered in Budapest—on the hill which now bears his name—in the course of a pagan insurrection against the Venetian king then ruling the Hungarians. [1]
Over the centuries the monastery became a theological, cultural and artistic center of primary importance in Europe. The monks had considerable autonomy and close links with Florence and Padua, and thus it became also a favoured location for foreign dignitaries to stay while in the city. In 1177 Pope Alexander III and Frederick Barbarossa met here. In 1204, Doge Enrico Dandolo secured the relics of Saint Lucy for the monastery; they were transferred in 1279 to Santa Lucia in Cannaregio.
In 1223 a violent earthquake destroyed the monastery. In 1433 Cosimo de' Medici, when exiled from Florence, took refuge here. Between 1560 and 1562 Andrea Palladio built a new refectory [2] for which Paolo Veronese painted the massive The Wedding Feast at Cana which was displayed there. [3] In 1566 began the construction of the new church by Palladio, who later designed also the "Palladian" cloister. Between 1641 and 1680 Baldassarre Longhena designed the new library, the grand staircase, the monastery facade, the novitiate, the infirmary and the guest quarters.
After the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, the monastery was deprived of its most precious books and works of art. Napoleon sent The Wedding Feast at Cana to Paris, and at present it is displayed in the Louvre museum. It is now possible, however, to admire a copy in the refectory which hangs in the place for which the painting was originally created.
The monastery was so important that, in 1799, while Rome was occupied by the French Revolutionary Army, the Papal conclave which elected Pope Pius VII was convened there. [4] The cardinals met in the chorum nocturnis (or Night choir), where the remarkable canvas St George slaying the Dragon by Vittore Carpaccio is still displayed.
Nevertheless, in 1806 the monastery was suppressed and the monks expelled; many of the monastery's remaining treasures were sold or stolen. Only a few monks were able to remain to serve in the church, while the monastery itself became a weapons depot. For more than a century it was used as a military garrison, undergoing grave deterioration.
In 1951 the Italian Government granted the monastery to the Cini Foundation, which restored it and revived its cultural heritage. On 29–30 May 1956 the Venice Conference of the Foreign Ministers of the six Member States of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was held in the San Giorgio Monastery to discuss the Spaak Report of the Spaak Committee.
The old and smaller monastic buildings to the left and rear of the basilica still serve as a small monastery of Benedictine monks, who continue to offer hospitality as part of their mission. [4] [5]
The Lido, or Venice Lido, is an 11-kilometre-long (7-mile) barrier island in the Venetian Lagoon, Northern Italy; it is home to about 20,400 residents. The Venice Film Festival takes place at the Lido late August/early September.
Paolo Caliari, known as Paolo Veronese, was an Italian Renaissance painter based in Venice, known for extremely large history paintings of religion and mythology, such as The Wedding at Cana (1563) and The Feast in the House of Levi (1573). Included with Titian, a generation older, and Tintoretto, a decade senior, Veronese is one of the "great trio that dominated Venetian painting of the cinquecento" and the Late Renaissance in the 16th century. Known as a supreme colorist, and after an early period with Mannerism, Paolo Veronese developed a naturalist style of painting, influenced by Titian.
San Giorgio Maggiore is one of the islands of Venice, northern Italy, lying east of the Giudecca and south of the main island group. The island, or more specifically its Palladian church, is an important landmark. It has been much painted, featuring for example in a series by Monet.
The bucentaur was the ceremonial barge of the doges of Venice. It was used every year on Ascension Day up to 1798 to take the doge out to the Adriatic Sea to perform the "Marriage of the Sea" – a ceremony that symbolically wedded Venice to the sea.
Gerard or Gerard Sagredo was the first bishop of Csanád in the Kingdom of Hungary from around 1030 to his death. Most information about his life was preserved in his legends which contain most conventional elements of medieval biographies of saints. He was born in a Venetian noble family, associated with the Sagredos or Morosinis in sources written centuries later. After a serious illness, he was sent to the Benedictine San Giorgio Monastery at the age of five. He received excellent monastic education and also learnt grammar, music, philosophy and law.
The House of Morosini was a powerful Venetian noble family that gave many doges, statesmen, generals, and admirals to the Republic of Venice, as well as cardinals to the Church.
The Wedding Feast at Cana, by Paolo Veronese, is a representational painting that depicts the biblical story of the Wedding at Cana, at which Jesus miraculously converts water into red wine. Executed in the Mannerist style (1520–1600) of the late Renaissance, the large-format oil painting comprehends the stylistic ideal of compositional harmony, as practised by the artists Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
Saint-Georges majeur au crépuscule refers to an Impressionist painting by Claude Monet, which exists in more than one version. It forms part of a series of views of the monastery-island of San Giorgio Maggiore. This series is in turn part of a larger series of views of Venice which Monet began in 1908 during his only visit there.
Antonio Vassilacchi, also called L'Aliense, was a Greek painter, who was active mostly in Venice and the Veneto.
Pietro I Orseolo OSBCam, also named Peter Urseulus, (928–987) was the Doge of Venice from 976 until 978. He abdicated his office and left in the middle of the night to become a monk. He later entered the order of the Camaldolese Hermits of Mount Corona. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. In 1733 the Venetian librarian Giuseppe Bettinelli published an edition of a biography written by the Friar Fulgenzio Manfredi in 1606.
San Giorgio Maggiore is a 16th-century Benedictine church on the island of the same name in Venice, northern Italy, designed by Andrea Palladio, and built between 1566 and 1610. The church is a basilica in the classical Renaissance style and its brilliant white marble gleams above the blue water of the lagoon opposite the Piazzetta di San Marco and forms the focal point of the view from every part of the Riva degli Schiavoni.
The Giorgio Cini Foundation, or just Cini Foundation, is a cultural foundation founded 20 April 1951 in memory of Giorgio Cini, an Italian entrepreneur who died in August 1949.
The Blessed John Morosini, O.S.B., was a Venetian abbot, who founded the noted Monastery of St. George in that city.
Isola di San Clemente is a small island in the Venetian Lagoon in Italy. For centuries it housed a monastic settlement, and more recently an asylum. It is now the site of a luxury hotel.
Factum Arte is an art conservation company based in Madrid, Milan, and London. Its commercial activity involves assisting contemporary artists to create technically difficult and innovative works of art. It also seeks to promote the use of non-contact 3D digitisation technologies to record museum collections and historic monuments, especially in areas where these are at risk. Since 2009, Factum Arte's non-profit cultural heritage projects have been carried out through the Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation.
The Abbazia di Monastier or Abbey of Santa Maria del Pero is located in Monastier di Treviso, province of Treviso, in the northeast Italian region of Veneto. This abbey was originally dedicated to Saint Peter, then re-named Santa Maria del Pero. The Pero is the ancient name for the Meolo river.
The Venetian Renaissance had a distinct character compared to the general Italian Renaissance elsewhere. The Republic of Venice was topographically distinct from the rest of the city-states of Renaissance Italy as a result of their geographic location, which isolated the city politically, economically and culturally, allowing the city the leisure to pursue the pleasures of art. The influence of Venetian art did not cease at the end of the Renaissance period. Its practices persisted through the works of art critics and artists proliferating its prominence around Europe to the 19th century.
Supper in the House of Simon the Pharisee is a 1544 oil on canvas painting by Moretto da Brescia, now in the Chiesa della Pietà in Venice, Italy.
The Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee is an oil-on-canvas painting by Paolo Veronese, completed in 1570 for San Sebastiano, a Hieronymite monastery in Venice. He also produced a cycle of works for the monastery church, where he was later buried. After the French occupation of Venice in the late 18th century, the monastery was suppressed and its art confiscated. In 1817, after the fall of Napoleon, Feast was assigned to the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, where it still hangs.
The Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee is a c.1565 oil-on-canvas painting by Veronese, now in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.
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