La Scuola di San Marco, Venezia, 1487.

Speranza



Trompe l'oeil perspectives cover the lower part of the facciata of the Scuola di San Marco, giving it an unusually charming effect.

The Scuola di San Marco was not in fact a school, as its name suggests, but an associatiaon of leading Venetian citizens whose aims ere both religious and humanitarian.

With great wealth at their disposal, the school commisioned the greatest artist of the day to build and deocarte the houses where the 'scholars' met, which generally contained chapels and sometimes, as heree, a hospital.

Pietro Lombardo and his sons executed the greater part of the facciata, but after a series of quarrels it was completed by Pietro Coducci, who added a crest of arched frontals, modelled on that of St. Mark's Basilica.