page_title: Loggetta del Sansovino
section_title: Materials
hierarchical_section_title: Loggetta del Sansovino / Building / Materials
caption_attribution_description: Català: Llotgeta del Sansovino i campanile, Venècia.
context_page_description: The Loggetta is a small, richly decorated building at the base of the bell tower in Saint Mark's Square, Venice, Italy. Built by Jacopo Sansovino between 1538 and 1546, it served at various times as a gathering place for nobles and for meetings of the procurators of Saint Mark, the Venetian officials responsible principally for the administration of the treasury of Saint Mark's Basilica and for the public buildings around Saint Mark's Square.
  Because of its location directly in front of the Porta della Carta, the most important entry to the Doge's Palace, the loggetta was also used from 1569 onward as a sentry post to provide security for the assembled nobles during the meetings of the Great Council: three procurators were to be present, assisted by an armed squadron of Arsenalotti, the workers from the government shipyards, in order to counter any popular assault and respond to any fire. Beginning in 1734, it was additionally the site for the extraction of winning tickets in the public lottery.
context_section_description: Given its small size, the loggetta cost the relatively considerable sum of 4,258 ducats and 14 grossi due to the lavish stone facing. The rich polychromatic effect, obtained by employing a number of rare stones and costly marbles, is reminiscent of the interior of the Pantheon, of Raphael’s Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo (begun c. 1512), and of Baldassare Peruzzi's tomb of Pope Adrian VI in Santa Maria dell'Anima (1523-1530), all constructions with which Sansovino was likely familiar from his second period in Rome (1516-1527).
  Locally available red Verona marble is used for much of the structure: the cornices, crowning balustrade, the panelling inside the niches, and the frames of the upper reliefs. The balustrade also contains opalescent lumachelle from the valley of San Vitale near Verona, noted for its fossilized mollusk shells. White Istrian stone, easily carved, is used for the relief sculptures. The authentic antique columns (only three of which survived the collapse of the bell tower in 1902) are made out of breccias from Asia and Africa and are positioned so that the colour and texture of the angular fragments of pre-existing rocks in the stone become progressively more pronounced moving towards the central columns. The lesenes behind the columns, the convex pulvinated frieze of the main entablature, and the capitals are in white Carrara marble veined with grey. Precious dark green lapis lacedaemonius (verde antico), found exclusively in the Peloponnese, is employed for the accents around the niches.
caption: Detail of the polychromatic façade showing oriental breccias, marbles from Verona and Carrara, limestone from Istria, and lapis lacedaemonius from Greece.
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