The Campanile of Belussi (today: Kypseli) on the Isle of Zante (Zakynthos). An Unknown Venetian Monument from the 18th Century

Abstract

The Greek island of Zante (Zakynthos) and its monuments suffered dramatically from major earthquakes in 1893 and 1953. In this paper an art-historical unknown and outstanding provincial Venetian church-tower (campanile) ruin in the island village of Belussi (today: Kypseli) is introduced. The monument was erected in 1778, accompanying its nearby “Panhagia” church (which was demolished and replaced with a modern construction after 1953), astonishingly survived the ʼ53 quake, and is examined and analyzed here for the first time. Two main construction types of Venetian campanili (16th–18th centuries) are existent in the area of investigation: The rectangular-based type and the type with a square fundamental, to which our example belongs. The erection was made possible, because of an international, enlightened, “up to date” and urbanocentric tastes of a wealthy Venetian rural and orthodox population. According to stylistic and typological analyses well-to-do villagers, seemingly chose and bought a building plan direct from a leading architect of the capital Venice, who might very possibly have been from the bureau of and / or Bernardino Maccaruzzi (ca. 1728–1800) himself, who is billed as Venice’s last “interpreter of the Baroque”. His plans were also used for church building on other shores of the Serenissma Republic’s colonial dominions at that time. This campanile echoes and quotes a typical and classical “Venetian” building pattern from the 16th century, namely the Renaissance-styled arch, being also a highly popular and global- and internationally widespread special feature of 18th-century architecture in general. Nearly identical towers with a similar facade design of mirror-shaped windows can be found surprisingly only twice in Venice itself (dating from 1736–1746 and 1758 respectively, and the last mentioned has been designed and built by Maccaruzzi). Thus, these window forms seem to be a rather unpopular decoration pattern for Venetian church towers, but shape-like mirror-formed decoration field examples were especially very popular, e.g., in the Southern Bavarian and Swabian baroque style, and widely used (in 2nd half of the 17th until 18th century chronological contexts) as horizontal or vertical “blind” facade decoration fields, church windows, or windows of church towers. The damaged tower, according to historical records and stylistic comparisons, has to be reconstructed with a two-window (per facade) belfry storey and above it an octagonal drum, closed by an onion-shaped cupola as its rooftop. In its latest, or even in the original colored concept, the tower seems to have been painted in a whitish (framing contours) and a bluish (facade decoration) plaster color pattern. The monument is presented here as a case study and shows furthermore the simple, but very sophisticated, elegance of Venetian provincial church building from 1684–1797, which is investigated in the present general art-historical research project of the author. The capital-styled campanile stands as a supra-confessional symbol, because it was erected by an orthodox or catholic population in the latest Venetian Republic style alike, and shows the cultural acceptance of the Serenissima by the rural population of its dominions. Furthermore, Venetian-styled campanile building enjoyed an impressive revival in the 19th century, not only on the Ionian Islands, but in Greece in general and is still very popular today.