# Exterior view [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [ARCHITECT, Italian]() - Date: 1301-1350 - Technique: Photo ## Commentary The Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo is the main Dominican church of Venice. It was founded in the mid-thirteenth century, the terrain was given by the doge Domenico Tiepolo to Dominican friars in 1246, after he had dreamed of a flock of white doves flying over it. The present structure seems to have been begun c. 1333. The choir is apparently late-fourteenth-century, and the consecration took place only in 1430. The church is also known as the pantheon of doges, as twenty-five of them have been buried there. The choir and transept form a richly articulated group in which the massive central polygon is flanked by the swelling and receding surfaces of four chapels. The verticals of the flanking chapels are emphasized by the simple buttresses and the repeated subdivision of the windows. A curious relic is guarded in the church: a urn containing the skin of Venetian hero Marcantonio Bragadin, a general who had fought against Turks and was captured and flayed by them. A luckier general, Bartolomeo Colleoni, has his statue – the only equestrian statue in Venice – just outside the church. View the <a href="\#" onClick="w=window.open \('/support/plans/zzzarchi/14c/3/1/venice1.html', 'newWin', 'scrollbars=yes,status=no,dependent=yes,screenX=0,screenY=0,width=400,height=600'\);w.opener=this;w.focus\(\);return false">ground plan</a> of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice. ## Related artworks - [Aerial view]() - [Aerial view]() - [Apse of a basilica]() - [Arsenale Gateway]() - [Arsenale Gateway]() - [Basilica di Sant'Antonio: Chiostro del Noviziato]() - [Basilica Santi Nereo e Achilleo]() - [Ca' Foscari: Façade]() - [Chamber of the millers]() - [Chiesa dell'Incoronata: Interior of the dome]() - [Cloister gallery]() - [Detail of the façade]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()