The beautiful church of the Madonna dell’Orto lies at the northern edge of Venice and has always attracted English admirers, including John Ruskin and Sir Ashley Clarke. It holds a special place for Venice in Peril Fund as it was our very first project. Named after a miraculous statue of the Virgin Mary, the church was part of a flourishing monastery occupied from 1462-1668 by a Venetian religious order called the Secular Canons of San Giorgio in Alga. Masterpieces by Giovanni Bellini, Cima da Conegliano and Pordenone were commissioned during their long tenure. Jacopo Tintoretto painted some of his most famous works for the church and is buried here. Altars and chapels were founded and the whole church was embellished during an ongoing struggle for the control of ecclesiastical space between the Secular Canons and powerful local families and lay confraternities, monitored by the Venetian State and the Papacy. In the end, the Secular Canons were expelled from the Madonna dell’Orto, but their era remains its Golden Age of art patronage.