The plan of the Church of the Zitelle's façade shows a two-level façade with a front door surmounted by a pediment and flanked by two Corinthian columns and two narrow bow-windows. The edifice was built between 1581 and 1588, perhaps after a design by Andrea Palladio (1508-80). This original design may have been modified during the construction by Giacomo Bozzetto (1521-83). The current church has a two-storey façade decorated with large windows and surmounted by a hemispheric cupola. An egg-and-dart moulding divides the ground floor from the upper level which has a large bow-window flanked by four Corinthian columns (two on each side) and surmounted by a large pediment. This structure is completed by a receding large dome decorated with a small domed tower and a free-standing statue on top. Two domed towers flank the larger pediment top.

Antonio Visentini (Venice, 21 Nov 1688 – Venice, 26 June 1782) was an Italian painter, engraver, architect and theorist. He was first known as a painter and trained with the Venetian history painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1675-1741). He became known as an engraver by the end of the 1720s when he was commissioned by Joseph Smith to produce engravings of Canaletto’s views of Venice. Visentini started working as an architect in 1731, and his first theoretical work, Libro di Architettura, which included Rococo-influenced drawings by Pier Antonio Morelli after Visentini’s ideas, was published in 1733.

His ideas on contemporary architecture derived from Antiquity and the work of Andrea Palladio (1508-80). Later however, Visentini developed neo-Palladian and anti-Baroque ideas. Visentini and his pupils executed numerous drawings of ancient and contemporary buildings intended to disseminate exemplary architecture. He participated to the foundation of the Venetian Academy in 1755, where he became a teacher of architectural perspective in 1772.