Art, faith and medicine: the exhibition about Tintoretto at Scuola Grande di San Marco

Until January 6, 2019, the exhibition dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the birth of Jacopo Tintoretto will be open at Scuola Grande di San Marco to celebrate his memory with a presentation that exalts the relationship between art, faith, and medicine.

The history

Jacopo and Domenico Tintoretto lived in a city in constant turmoil, Venice. Venice was the publishing capital of Europe and a city able to promote both the knowledge of the ancients and the spread of the most modern scientific achievements. Some of the most famous doctors and surgeons of the time were enrolled in the Scuola Grande di San Marco, where they practiced medicine for free. Born as a confraternity where the soul of the “fradei” was purified by the wounds inflicted by the scourge, the Scuola was transformed into a place of care, combining the spiritual comfort with health care for the neediest people. To inspire the activities of the Scuola were the miracles of their patron saint, San Marco, whose deeds were immortalized by Jacopo and Domenico Tintoretto in a great pictorial cycle of which remain today in the Scuola only the canvases for the chapel. Placing the study of the body at the base of their art, the two Tintoretto succeeded in reshaping the figure of the Evangelist, exalting the perfection of the forms as a mirror of his prodigious healing abilities.

The exhibition

Place of care, devotion, and artistic avant-garde: art, faith, and medicine interweave each other inside of the Scuola Grande di San Marco and this is what the exhibition examines. Divided into 7 sections, the exposure looks into the relationships between devotional activities, medical practices, anatomical studies and representations of the human body, focusing on a unique variety of works of art, including paintings, drawings, miniated manuscripts, illustrated volumes, engravings, printing matrices, and surgical instruments.

More info

Opening hours: From Tuesday to Saturday and the first Sunday of the month From 9.30 am to 5.30 pm Full price ticket: € 5 Reduced price (under 18 and over 70): € 3 Free: Venetian residents, guides entered in the Register of the Veneto Region, patients admitted to the Civil Hospital and employees and non-employees of the Civil Hospital.