What is "scalzi"

Santa Maria di Nazareth is a Roman Catholic Carmelite church in Venice, northern Italy. It is also called Church of the Scalzi (Chiesa degli Scalzi) being the seat in the city of the Discalced Carmelites religious order (Scalzi in Italian means "barefoot"). Located in the sestiere of Cannaregio, near Venezia Santa Lucia railway station, it was built in the mid 17th century to the designs of Baldassarre Longhena and completed in the last decades of that century.

The Rococo facade, financed by the aristocrat Gerolamo Cavazza, was erected by Giuseppe Sardi, from 1672 to 1680. The four statues in the first order, the statue of the Virgin and Child, and the statues of Saint Catherine of Siena and St Thomas Aquinas are sculpted by Bernardo Falconi.