In the silence of Cannaregio, between the Fondamenta della Misericordia (a fondamenta is a canalside walkway) and the Campo dell’Abbazia (a campo is a Venetian square), rises a mass of bare brick as large as a Roman basilica: it is the Scuola Nuova della Misericordia, the palace that Jacopo Sansovino began in 1532 for one of the oldest and richest confraternities in Venice, and which never received the planned stone facing.