Chiesa della Santa Selfie, or, Church of the Holy Selfie

23 July 2024

Viewed from afar within the vast space of the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo the object looked liked a  rectangular wood dining room table suitable for a party of eight, its top surface tilted at a 45 degree angle in the direction of the church's stained glass window. Only when I got closer could I see that it was actually a wood-framed mirror, mobile and adjustable like a larger version of the full-length mirrors people use to look at home to check their outfits.

This mirror hadn't been in the church when we moved from Venice years ago, and at first I thought it must have been put there for a similar reason that square-framed hand-held mirrors are available in the Great Hall of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco: so that one admire one of the feature's of the place without straining one's neck. In the case of San Rocco it's the refection of the ornate ceiling high overhead that you study in the mirror (if you're not snorting a line off it, as Geoff Dyer's protagonist does in Jeff in Venice); in Giovanni and Paolo I assumed it would be the stained glass window.

But I quickly realized there was no advantage to looking at the mirror's reflection, as I could easily study the window straight-on with no undue strain on my neck or eyes.

Then I noticed the blue label in one corner of the mirror--just like the one you see above (though that one is reflecting a ceiling painting by Veronese in a side chapel)--and noted how the height of the mirror was such that I could readily position myself before it to take, yes, the perfect selfie. 

Me--nearly all of me!--centered and foregrounded against a brilliant colorful background of stained glass, its sacred subjects reduced to compositional elements and a filtered backlighting that really popped!

But I didn't take that shot. Nor one in the mirror captured above that offered me the chance to appear in a celestial scene with Mary Herself. 

Instead I found myself wondering about a lot of things that I won't bore you with here. If you haven't been in the church yourself lately the news of these selfie mirrors might make you wonder some things of your own. I didn't see them in other churches, but, then, I didn't go into many other churches last month. Perhaps they're in a lot of churches now. 

It was one of the stranger differences I encountered in this new old Venice I returned to after being away for three years--a Venice that had been my family's home for over a decade but wasn't/isn't anymore. Perhaps I can get to some of the other differences soon.