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Great Discoveries "Personal Tour Guides" will provide you with the most enjoyable and informative way to visit the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Our carefully researched tour identifies and locates the most relevant treasures to ensure that you do not miss important works and that you clearly understand each items artistic and historic significance. As you view these carefully selected treasures, our professional narrators, accompanied by historically appropriate background music, will delight, amuse and inform you, making your visit a most memorable experience. Learn about the Scuola, a 16th century treasure chests of Venetian paintings and a shrine to followers of Tintoretto, with informative descriptions, photo's, building diagrams, sample audio tracks and more.
La Scuola Grande di San Rocco was founded in 1478 as part of a network of religious brotherhoods and confraternities (guilds) set up in Venice to perform charitable acts. Scuola, by the way, has nothing to do with a school. The term is derived from Latin and means corporation, or guild. There have been many throughout Venetian history, a few being designated as grand. The scuola were corporations that combined charitable and mutual assistance among the members.
By joining together many of the lower orders of society (merchants, artisans, state workers, doctors), the scuola, greatly influenced the affairs of the state. The patricians may have ruled the republic, but the wealth of the members of the scuola gave the middle and lower classes a strong voice in the society as a whole. Generally, the first floor of the scuola was designated for religious or charitable functions, while the second floor was used as meeting places. These were often highly decorated halls, sometimes ostentatious but more often exquisitely beautiful. The meeting halls and the exteriors of the buildings became symbols of the prosperity, influence, and civic status of the guilds.
This guild was dedicated to the ideals of St. Rocco, sometimes called St. Roch, the patron saint of the sick. St. Rocco was born the son of the governor of Montpellier, France in 1295 and at the age of 20 he began helping plague victims in Italy and southern France. His popularity stemmed from his miraculous recovery from the plague and his care for fellow sufferers. Throughout the plague-filled Middle Ages, followers and donations abounded, and this elegant example of Venetian Renaissance architecture was the result. Although it is bold and dramatic outside, its contents are even more stunning.
Bartolomeo Bon designed the building and built the ground floor in 1515. Giangiacomo dei Grigi who provided the finishing touches finally completed it in 1527. The interior, composed of two big halls and a smaller one on the upper floor, called the Albergo Room, represents the typical structure of the Venetian scuola, whose spaces were devoted to meetings of the guild and worship.
This museum is a dazzling monument to the work of Jacopo Tintoretto -- it holds the largest collection of his work anywhere. The series of the more than 50 dark and dramatic works took the artist more than 20 years to complete, making this the richest of the many confraternity guilds or scuola that once flourished in Venice.
The walls of the rooms and the ceilings of the upper floor are completely covered with canvasses by Tintoretto. They represent one of the most important picture cycles of art history. The most renowned of these is Tintoretto's stunning “Crucifixion”, which is hanging in the Albergo Room. The paintings on the ceilings are so alluring that the museum provides mirrors to use for standing and looking at each piece -- otherwise your neck would cramp. There are also some interesting easel works by Titian, Tiepolo, and Giorgione. On the staircase are canvasses by Pietro Negri and Antonio Zanchi.
The Scuola Grande di San Rocco’s interior is so incredibly impressive that its works of art set off by gold gild trim inspire one to just sit and contemplate. The museum is an absolute must for art lovers. A visit would be worthy of almost any walk and it moves above many other Venetian sites in terms of priority. Definitely make the time to stop in here.
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Scuola
Grande di San Rocco is a striking 16th century Renaissance building that exhibits traces of successive enhancements up through the Baroque
period. It is one of the most important treasure
chests of 
for your first sample before playing the second sample, or you
will not hear it.
