The Art

Today Rizzi-Albarea Villa conserves a Church, up to the year 1100, that presents style superposition and repairs that have been made across the centuries by the abbesses, because of the many fires and collapses that have occurred in about 1000 years of history. The abbesses belonged to the most important noble families of Venice. Cultured and rich, these abbesses use to invite the most famous painters of their time to work and restore. The present ceiling, attributed to Tiepolo's School, is in fact the last repairing done by the nuns in 1722. On the front of the Church, you can still see, because they have been restored, the two unique stone sections that have survived, and on which are carved the dates of the two restoring and the names of the Abbesses (1350 and 1722). The "Via Crucis" has a painting attributed to Tintoretto's School, and then the paddle and the altar, with the polycrome marbles of the XIVth century, and a very beautiful and ancient wooden statue of Mary and baby Jesus: "La Vergine del Rosario", to whom in the Middle of Ages was dedicated a Church (then called "Santa Maria di Albarea") and to whose feet the young and future brides used to go and pray in those times, to obtain special benedictions, and giving their rosaries after receiving the grace. Some of these rosaries are still conserved. Every year in May, the Rizzi repeat the ancient tradition of the procession, with Masses and Rosaries dedicated to the Virgin, whose statue has recently been repaired.