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Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo Review
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Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo
Fodor's Review:
This large, attractive square is the site of three city landmarks: the imposing namesake Gothic church; the Scuola Grande di San Marco, with one of the loveliest Renaissance facades in Italy; and the only equestrian monument ever erected by La Serenissima. The rider, Bartolomeo Colleoni, served Venice well as a condottiere, or mercenary commander -- the Venetians preferred to pay others to fight for them on land. When he died in 1475, he left his fortune to the city on the condition that a statue be erected in his honor "in the piazza before San Marco." The republic's shrewd administrators coveted Colleoni's ducats but had no intention of honoring anyone, no matter how valorous, with a statue in Piazza San Marco. So they collected the loot, commissioned a statue by Florentine sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-88), and put it up before the Scuola Grande di San Marco, which, before becoming part of the city hospital, was headquarters of a powerful fraternal order.
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