San Silvestro, Venice

San Silvestro stands a few steps from the Rialto, in the old trading quarter of San Polo, and the church a visitor walks into is mostly 19th century. Part of the medieval building collapsed in 1820, the whole church was rebuilt from 1837 in a sober neoclassical style, and the façade was finished only in 1909.

The older paintings were brought back into the new interior. The best known is Tintoretto's Baptism of Christ, an altarpiece from around 1580, with a wide stretch of water filling the landscape behind the figures. Tintoretto, the Venetian painter best known for his huge cycle at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, came back to this subject several times.

Another picture made for this church did leave. The Adoration of the Magi by Paolo Veronese, painted in 1573 for a confraternity devoted to Saint Joseph, was sold in 1855 and now hangs in the National Gallery in London.