Baldassare Longhena and the Ospedaletto Church Facade

What is it about?

The façade of Santa Maria dei Derelitti, also known as the church of the Ospedaletto (Venice, 1674), is one of the most eccentric works by the Venetian architect Baldassare Longhena. Devised as a frontispiece to the church of a hospital, the façade features conspicuous grotesque elements, such as leonine heads and rustic herms. In Negligentia Diligens: Baldassare Longhena and the Ospedaletto Church Façade, Stefano Colombo investigates the seemingly paradoxical architecture of the façade on architectural and rhetorical grounds, suggesting that in its subversion of architectural normativity, the façade offers a metaphor for the symbolic elevation of the poor population under the hospital’s care. By examining the concepts of norms and license as these were formulated in seventeenth-century visual rhetoric and architectural theory, Colombo investigates how the Ospedaletto church façade served as an architectural celebration of the humble, with ironic undertones

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Why is it important?

This essay presents a novel reading of Baldassare Longhena's facade of the church of the Ospedaletto in Venice. It interprets its subversion of architectural norms as a metaphor for the symbolic elevation of the poor population under the hospital’s care, with ironic undertones.