Chiesa Parrocchiale di San Moisè

This guide to the Chiesa Parrocchiale di San Moisè in Venice starts from a Venetian law forbidding any citizen from erecting a public statue of himself, and the loophole a merchant named Vincenzo Fini found in 1668: pay for a church facade instead. It follows Fini and his brother Girolamo as they hired architect Alessandro Tremignon and sculptor Heinrich Meyring to pile camels, angels, virtues and obelisks onto the entrance, working their own portraits in beside the doors they funded. Look for the two brothers' faces among the crowd of carved stone before you step inside.