The Madonna dell'Orto, one of Venice 's finest Gothic churches, was reconstructed in the fifteenth century on the site of a fourteenth-century church dedicated to St Christopher. It was built to enshrine a miraculous image of the virgin found in a nearby garden ( orto) or orchard. In the 'Venetian Index', appended to Volume Three of The Stones of Venice, Ruskin describes it as an 'interesting example of Renaissance Gothic' and refers to its paintings by Tintoretto ( Works, 11.395). Effie Ruskin wrote that he took her to see the Tintorettos 'but going in hot to a place like a well to see a death's head gave me such a shiver that I ran out of the church and I do not intend to return again' (cited in Links, Venice for Pleasure, p.181).