DE CORTE, Josse

The altar, designed by Baldassare Longhena, and executed by De Corte, was built by order of Father Agostino Maffei from the nearby friary in 1672. The angels on the tympanum support the image of the sudarium of St Veronica, while other angels between the two marble columns are on either side of the cross, and others kneel in adoration.

The wooden statue of Our Lady of Sorrow at the foot of the cross was once in the Chapel of Mourning in the cloister of the Holy Trinity.

Giuseppe Sardi was commissioned in 1664 by the merchant Bartolomeo Cargnoni to rebuild the church of Santa Maria dei Derelitti, also known as the Ospedaletto. The church was completed by Baldassare Longhena; the fa�ade was designed by Longhena and its sculpture carved by Josse De Corte.

The picture shows a detail of the carved decoration of the fa�ade: one of the grotesques on the supporting pilasters at the entrance portal.

The high altar in the Santa Maria della Salute, with its octagonal plan, was designed by Longhena and portrays angels acting as caryatids and cherubs singing and playing instruments on the lower bases executed by Josse de Corte and assistants.

Sculptural altarpieces enjoyed a particular revival in Venice in the second half of the seventeenth century. A tradition of free-standing altarpieces had been introduced by Palladio’s churches at the end of the sixteenth century, so it was not surprising that Baldassare Longhena made provision for a similar structure in his great Venetian votive church, Santa Maria della Salute. Raised as an offering against the plague, the Salute housed a miraculous icon of the Virgin which was incorporated into the high altar by Josse de Corte. As the altar stands between the monks’ choir and the presbytery, De Corte followed the formula of sculptural complexes for San Giorgio Maggiore and the Redentore by Girolamo Campagna, fashioning a sacred drama of Venice’s deliverance from the plague.

The Virgin is shown with the Christ Child interceding on behalf of a kneeling figure of Venice, while on her other side the plague is represented by a witchlike apparition toppling into the void; the city’s patron saints Mark and Lorenzo Giustinian look up from below.

As a whole the altar does not quite succeed, the statuary being too small in scale and too meticulously worked to register in the vastness of its setting.

The Virgin is shown with the Christ Child interceding on behalf of a kneeling figure of Venice, while on her other side the plague is represented by a witchlike apparition toppling into the void; the city’s patron saints Mark and Lorenzo Giustinian look up from below.

This statue is on the high altar in the church of Santa Maria della Salute.

At the beginning of the 1670s De Corte expressed his full maturity in the extraordinary complex of the high altar, and he dominated and guided Venetian sculpture through the decade. His statues on the altar were the most evocative and influential, even into the following century.

Giuseppe Sardi was commissioned in 1664 by the merchant Bartolomeo Cargnoni to rebuild the church of Santa Maria dei Derelitti, also known as the Ospedaletto. The church was completed by Baldassare Longhena; the fa�ade was designed by Longhena and its sculpture carved by Josse De Corte.

The picture shows a detail of the carved decoration of the fa�ade: one of the telamons from the upper order.