The story
Venetians shorten the name to San Zanipolo, and for centuries this huge brick church of the Dominican friars was where the Republic buried many of its rulers. Twenty-five doges lie here, several in towering wall tombs carved by the Lombardo family of sculptors, so that a walk down the nave reads like the state's own family album. The building rose slowly, begun in 1333 and finished only in 1430.
The paintings people seek out are spread through the church. In the south aisle stands Giovanni Bellini's polyptych of Saint Vincent Ferrer, a Dominican preacher. In the south transept hangs Lorenzo Lotto's Saint Antoninus Giving Alms, finished around 1542 for the friars. Lotto lodged with these Dominicans, and in his will of 1546 he asked to be buried in their cemetery, giving up part of his fee in return. The picture shows Antoninus, the Dominican archbishop of Florence, above a crowd of the poor, while clerics below sort their petitions and hand out alms.
The Chapel of the Rosary lost its treasures to a fire in 1867, among them Titian's celebrated Death of Saint Peter Martyr. Its ceiling now holds canvases by Paolo Veronese, including an Annunciation and an Assumption.
Outside in the square rides Andrea del Verrocchio's bronze statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, a mercenary general who served Venice. Colleoni left the Republic money on condition that his monument stand in front of San Marco, and the Senate placed it instead here, in front of the Scuola Grande di San Marco.
