The decision to construct a large building destined to be the new seat of the Scuola (see fig.1) goes back to 1499 and precedes by at least 25 years the effective signing of the sales contract for the required land. Although the Confratelli had expressed the intention to acquire land at Castelforte, property of the parish of San Pantalon, since 1507, the actual contract came to be signed in 1516. Following this (on the 8th of July, 1517), the Confraternity finalised an agreement with the Frati minori of the Frari for the buying of a section of the field in front of the old Scoletta, part of which was used as a cemetery. On the 11th of January 1517, Pietro Bon, was hired as the overseer of construction, who in all likelihood had to conform to a project formulated by the directing body of the Scuola. It was a very traditional model, similar to other Venetian Scuole, consisting of two halls, one above the other, which were to make up the main body of the building. The Ground Floor Hall, divided into three aisles by two rows of columns, was accessible from outside through the portal onto the campo. From the hall, two doors gave access to two symmetrical arms of a staircase (scala “a tribunale”) which ended on a landing at its height covered by a cupola and which opens onto the Upper Hall, the site of processions and meetings of the Confratelli. In this hall, a door was opened to give access to the Sala dell’Albergo (Hall of the Hostel), the room used for meetings of the Banca e Zonta. This room was built over an arcade known as “dei Morti” which opened on the campo through a secondary door in the façade.
The laying of the first stone took place on the 25th of March, 1517. Work began with the foundations to the north and in 1519 the walls of the Albergo had already been erected.

1. Main façade of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco

2. South façade of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, engraving by Domenico Lovisa, 18th century, detail.

In 1520 disagreements arose between the overseer Bon and the “procuratori alla fabbrica” of the Scuola who had decided on raising the lower floor with high pedestals for the columns and with the erection of an external plinth.
This created great difficulties for the building of the staircase. The intervention of the Venti Savi and the nomination, by the council of Ten, of a commission of overseers was necessary. However, this did not prevent a breakdown in relations with Pietro Bon. In 1523, the first version of the façade, with the Codussian mullioned windows, was completed.
The new overseer, Sante Lombardo, was nominated on the 3rd of June, 1524. It was his first assignment and he was employed with a double clause, that he would be assisted by his father, Tullio, and that he would be rigorously attentive to the proposals made by the Scuola. He completed roofing the Ground floor Hall and raised the second register of the East and North walls, sculpting and mounting most of the mullion windows, according to a model which partly recalls classical examples. Overcoming serious static difficulties, he completed the whole South façade (see fig.2) looking on to the canal, a genuine work of art which owed something to his father, Tullio’s help.
The roofing of the Upper Hall and the Sala dell’Albergo was begun in 1527, when the Scuola decided to choose a new overseer, Antonio Abbondi, also known as lo Scarpagnino, who was then at the peak of his professional career and who is responsible for the present aspect of the building, with the two-fold decision to introduce the eight free columns on the facade and to adopt the model of the ‘imperial’ staircase. First of all Scarpagnino attended to the completion of the superior entablature, the consolidation of the portico on the canal and the foundations of the Albergo. In 1530 the roofing of the Sala dell’Albergo was completed, replacing the hollow tiles with a lead covering. In 1537 work was started on the windows of the upper floor, which have a more triumphal conception than Lombardo’s. The roofing of the Sala Capitolare was done between 1538 and 1539, whereas the lead covering, begun in 1541 was completed in December 1546. The most significant work for Scarpagnino was the completion of the façade on the campo with the five windows and the addition of eight free columns triumphantly detached from the façade plane, as in the ancient Roman arches and according to a ‘suggestion’, apparently from Sansovino. Nevertheless the columns of San Rocco are original for the connections between the channelling which are nearer to the Doric than the Corinthian, for the language of the capitals, for the pretty little animals of the Medieval model that ornate the bases and lastly for the fascias which entwine the eight trunks and which portray the vine, the lime tree, the olive tree and the oak. At last a very important duty for Scarpagnino involved the new ‘imperial’ staircase. It was necessary to buy the Castelforte share, concluded with the San Pantalon parish on 2 January 1534, the demolition of the old ‘tribunal’ staircase of bricks and wood (which had been completed by Scarpagnino himself) and the realisation of a wooden model which was made of a structure formed by two initial ramps covered by barrel vaults, a common landing and by a central superior ramp with barrel vaults which would reach the Sala Superiore. The model was adopted on 21 June 1545 and the works were completed in 1550 under the supervision of Giangiacomo de’ Grigi, after Scarpagnino’s death in 1549.
The formal investiture of the new overseer took place in August 1558, but his activity had already started a few years earlier with the restoration of the Albergo dei Masseri under the central ramp of the big staircase, the construction of two rooms for the archive and the sacred vestments above the inferior ramps of the staircase, the building of the altar in the Sala Terrena and the completion of all the roofing, in 1559. On 9 September 1560 Giangiacomo de' Grigi left the yard which at this date was more or less finished.

Between 1587 and 1618 the altar in the Sala Superiore was built.
In the eighteenth century, Giorgio Fossati realised the raising of the Sala del Tesoro to the floor of the Scalone, clearly visible in the west facade looking on to Campo Castelforte (see fig.3).
Between 1882 and 1895 architect Pietro Saccardo rebuilt the floor of the Upper Hall and of the Sala dell’Albergo.
In 1990 a vast stone restoration campaign of all the external surfaces began and in 1990 the roofing of the Tesoro was transformed, using hollow tiles made of lead slabs.

For more details on the history of the construction of the Scuola Grande, see Gianmario Guidarelli’s: “Una giogia ligata in piombo”: la fabbrica della Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venezia, 1517-1560, Quaderni della Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco, N. 8, Venice 2002.

3. West façade of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, overlooking Campo Castelforte.

THE BUILDING

THE FAÇADES
The imposing and isolated construction is composed of the main two-floor rectangular section, which includes the Ground Floor Hall and Upper Hall, which are connected to the two separate sections of the Albergo and the Scalone.
The main façade, on the North side (see fig.4), looks on to the campo and extends to include the Sala dell'Albergo. It is rich in construction details which make it incredibly ornate and varied like a precocious baroque. It is characterised by a double order of columns which distinguish the body of the building comprising the big Halls. On the capital of the corner column the date of the beginning of the works is engraved: 1535.
The two different kinds of windows, the lower one of a Codussian model by Pietro Bon and the one above by Scarpagnino, form a whole thanks to the vertical design of the columns. The plastic decorations resulting from the insertion of numerous polychromatic marbles are redundant, in the manner of the Venetian chiselling of the mid Sixteenth century. The two portals, one central and one on one side, show two phases of construction: first, the jambs and the door frames were set up, the first in porphyritic tablets and paterae and ancient green, the second, in simple Istrian stone. Later, the framing structures were laid: respectively two columns on semi-octagonal pedestals which support a triangular tympanum in the sala’s portal, two ionic pilasters crowned by an entablature with archivolted tympanum on the side Albergo’s portal.
The under-roof tympanum is at the back of the façade plane, and for its decoration some designs were formulated but then abandoned.
On the left corner of the façade, the marble pillar of the flag pilum has undergone several restorations. It showed the pennant and the standard of the Confraternity on the occasion of big celebrations such as the Feast of San Rocco (16 August) and the Feast of the Confratelli S. Pius X and Beato Giovanni XXIII (23 September).

4.View of the main façade	5.View of the south façade

The south façade, on the canal (see fig.5), presents a unitary character and is by Sante Lombardo, who was certainly helped by his father Tullio, as he was very young. The frame of the façade is very simple: two registers subdivided by thin pilaster strips in three bays, which on the ground floor correspond to the three fornici of the passing portico and on the upper floor give room to respectively the two side windows and the central tabernacle. There are refined details, such as the capitals of the pilasters; the pairs of crossing cornucopia, the winged sphere and the eight heads in high relief of the frieze of the upper entablature; the two pairs of dolphins which frame a marble patera and the big eagle sculpted in full relief in the lower entablature; and lastly the central tabernacle with a niche surmounted by a circle arch tympanum.
The east façade, on the calle (see fig.6), is very simple. it is enriched by monumental windows of codussian style in the lower register, which follow the elegant design by Pietro Bon, and by the more elaborate windows of the upper register by Sante Lombardo. The latter propose two archivolted fornici which are framed by semi-columns and a pinnacle formed by an architrave surmounted by a triangular tympanum.

6. View of the east façade	7. View of the west façade

The west façade, overlooking campo di Castelforte and the calle Tintoretto (see fig.7), is characterised by two sections projecting from the section of the Halls. The first includes the “Portico delle arche” and the Sala del Guardian da Matin on the ground floor, the “Scrigni” on the mezzanine and the Sala dell’Albergo on the first floor. The second is composed of a lower portico, the Scalone with dome connected to the Sala and lastly the raising of the Tesoro, in 1775 from a drawing by Giorgio Fossati. Between the two sections there is a small yard with a well parapet where the Scuola’s monogram is inscribed; above the curious spiral staircase which gives access to the garret. The surfaces of the façade are finished in marmorino, like the east facade. The big windows of the ground floor by Pietro Bon and the ones on the upper floor by Sante Lombardo but laid by Scarpagnino after the construction of the new staircase.

8. The Ground Floor Hall

THE INTERIOR

The Ground Floor Hall (see fig.8) presents three aisles with small columns with octagonal pedestals; the ceiling is made of beams in the manner of many Venetian Scuole. On the right wall there is a corridor which is connected to the “portico delle arche”, so called because of the ten gravestones laid in 1528. In the Hall, the first door gives access to the Sala del Guardian da Matin, surrounded by altar frontals and eighteenth century wardrobes; above the Sala there are mezzanine rooms which host the Scrigni and are characterised by heavily barred windows.
On the right side of the Hall, between the two elegant portals of the Scalone there is the door of the Albergo dei Masseri where some eighteenth century wardrobes find place.
On the back wall there is the sixteenth century altar. Near the entrance, a headstone commemorates Pope Paul VI’s visit to the Scuola in 1782. On the other two walls, in the middle of the Hall, two headstones are dedicated to the honorary Confratelli who were called to the papal throne, Beato Giovanni XXIII and Giovanni Paolo I.
The Scalone (see fig.9), with barrel vaults on the two lower separate and parallel ramps and on the second central ramp, ends with a dome and gives access to the Upper Hall through a magnificent portal of six columns, where a double arch is set, whose pedestals have six reliefs which refer to episodes from the Old Testament and garlands engraved in the decorations.
More solemn and monumental, the Upper Hall (see fig.10), was the meeting place of the Capitolo della Scuola. The end wall is occupied entirely by the Presbytery and the Altar. Between here and the Scalone, a small door gives access to the Sala della Cancelleria – still used for the meetings of the management of the Archconfraternity – it communicates with the small room of the Archive.
The entrance to the Treasury is on the right wall, after the Scalone.
The Upper Hall gives direct access to the Sala dell'Albergo (see fig. 11), the meeting place of the Banca e Zonta. From the big bar and the wooden altar frontals constitute the furniture of this room which, once a year, usually hosts the Convocato Generale of the Confratelli and Consorelle.

9. The Scalone	10. The Upper Hall	11. The Sala dell’Albergo