The staircase alongside the café leads to the Browning Mezzanine, which houses the Mestrovich Collection, including works by artists such as Jacopo Tintoretto and Bonifacio de’ Pitati. The visit to the museum collection begins at Giorgio Massari’s large ceremonial staircase on the side of the palace opposite to the Grand Canal.
The visit to the museum collections begins at Giorgio Massari’s large ceremonial staircase on the side of the palace opposite to the Grand Canal. On the first floor, eleven rooms exhibit paintings, sculptures, frescoed ceilings, and collections of 18th century furniture. Among the most beautiful and fascinating rooms there is the Ballroom, the Room of the Nuptial Allegory and the Tiepolo’s Room.
The Throne Room
At the end of the piano nobile, looks out at both the Grand Canal and the Rio San Barnaba. It takes its name from an elaborate gilded and sculpted wooden throne which was used during the brief visit of Pope Pius VI in 1778, on his way from Rome to Vienna. It was also the bridal chamber of Ludovico Rezzonico and Faustina Savorgnan. Besides the throne, the other notable features of the room are the ceiling frescos, titled The Allegory of Merit, which were painted by Tiepolo and his sons in just twelve days. The furniture in the room is also notable, particularly sculpted and gilded tables, mirrors and candlesticks, ornamented with statues of putti and figures representing the different virtues. The room also features several fine Chinese porcelain vases.
The decoration of the wedding couple’s apartment ends with the ceiling of this last room, again frescoed by Giambattista Tiepolo with the collaboration of Girolamo Mengozzi Colonna. It shows Merit as a bearded old man crowned with laurels rising to the Temple of Immortal Glory accompanied by Nobility (the winged figure holding a spear) and Virtue (the richly-dressed figure to the right of the old man). Other allegorical figures and cherubs crown the scene. One of these, beneath the figure of Merit, is holding the Golden Book of the Venetian Nobility where the names of patrician families were registered, including that of the Rezzonico family from 1687 onward.
This room, lined in red velvet, takes its name from the gilded wooden throne decorated with cherubs, sea-nymphs and sea-horses. This was used by Pius VI on 10th March 1782, when he stayed in Chioggia as a guest of the Grassi family.
It was however made considerably before that date, in the first decades of the 18th century, and it shows the quality and exuberance of Brustolon’s carving, updated to suit a less pompous, less showy taste. Less austere gilding were now preferred to the dark, glossy late 17th-century materials, and they helped to refine the ornamentation which was still quite massy.
The rich furniture of the room is in the same taste. This includes the imposing frame on the wall to the left of the entrance door with its rich allegorical decoration celebrating the moral virtues of the patrician Pietro Barbarigo, the subject of the portrait. Starting from the Babarigo coat-of-arms at the top and proceeding clockwise, we see in order: Patriotism, Charity, Constancy, Magnanimity, Prudence, Justice and Faith. The remaining part of the furniture includes an elaborate console, and four armchairs so finely carved that they were at one time attributed to the sculptor Antonio Corradini; this artist however actually never made any works in wood. This suite of furniture combines Baroque ornamental motifs, such as the full-relief figurative elements, with a new lighter, more graceful kind of workmanship (for example, elimination of linking elements on the armchair legs). This approach eventually led to the more slender shapes and smaller proportions which we saw in the furniture of the previous room.
Allegory of Merit Accompanied by Nobility and Virtue
Gian Rinaldo Carli 1749 by Bartolomeo Nazari
Gerolamo Maria Balbi by Fortunato Pasquetti
Pietro Barbarigo detto lo Zoppo by Bernardino Castelli
Portego
In the traditional structure of the Venetian palace, the portego, or passing lounge, was the largest room of the building, intended to play the role of a performance room. This space today presents marble busts of the eighteenth century representing allegorical portraits and figures, while the walls are covered with Red Verona marble.
The portego, or connecting hall, played the role of reception room. In Longhena’s project which was then revised by Massari, this role has been taken over by the main central room, a type of room imported to Venice from the architecture of the Roman palaces. Thus the portego became simply a connecting element between the rooms and the staircase leading to the other floors. This area was once decorated by four canvases with religious subjects by Luca Giordano, which were then sold during the 19th century.
Now it contains 18th-century marble busts inside niches or on brackets showing portraits and allegorical figures, while the walls are lined in pink marmorino polished plaster. Sofas of refined rocaille taste, carved walnut trestle tables and an elegant gilded sedan chair upholstered in red silk complete the furnishings. Among the ornamental sculptures to the right of the sedan chair, is a remarkable bust of Envy, the work of Giusto Le Cour. The author shows with highly convincing naturalism the allegory described by Cesare Ripa in his Iconologia as an “old, ugly, and pale woman, her body is lean and wasted, with malevolent eyes and dishevelled hair, and snakes swarm from her head”. Quite different is instead the carnal and languid Lucretia visible against the same wall on the left, by Filippo Parodi, a Genoese sculptor also active in Venice.
On either side of the doorway, which is almost a triumphal arch dominated by the Rezzonico coat-of-arms, are two sculptures by Alessandro Vittoria, originally two telamons holding up the hood of the imposing late 16th-century fireplace.
The two large console tables against the wall feature two superb hard stone inlaid tops by Benedetto Corberelli, a member of a Florentine family active in northern Italy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, specialized in the production of this kind of artefacts.
Created for Bishop Francesco Pisani, the two table tops show a rich decoration with floral spirals and interlaced branches that surround a central medallion depicting Orpheus and the Phoenix respectively. Animals and colourful birds peep out from among the branches, while episodes from Aesop’s fables can be recognized in the corners.
Lucretia by Filippo Parodi Italian sculptor Baroque of the Genoese school, pupil of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Active in Padua and Venice.
Allegory of Envy by Giusto Le Court.
Pair of Atlantis marble supporting a lintel chimney by Alessandro Vittoria (1525 -1608) a sculptor Mannerist of the Venetian school.
A marble bust of the Pope Innocent XI above the door.
Busts of Democritus and Heraclitus by Giuseppe Torretti.
Lucrezia by Filippo Parodi
Allegory of Envy by Giusto Le Court
Atlas by Alessandro Vittoria
Atlas by Alessandro Vittoria
Bust of the Pope Innocent XI
Democritus by Giuseppe Torretti
Heraclitus by Giuseppe Torretti
The Tiepolo Hall
In this room you can admire the third of Giambattista Tiepolo’s four ceilings in Ca’ Rezzonico. This modelled canvas shows Nobility and Virtue defeating Wickedness. Unlike the frescoes in the other rooms of the lower piano nobile, this work was not painted for the palace, but was created between 1744 and 1745 for Pietro Barbarigo for his palace in Santa Maria del Giglio. Later it was removed by his heirs and purchased in 1934 by the Venice Town Council to be exhibited in this room. In this work, Tiepolo goes back to an allegorical theme he had already used various times for his noble patrons. This time he adds the figure of the elegant page bearing the train of Nobility, who is perhaps the portrait of his son Giuseppe Maria.
Has the third of the four Tiepolo ceilings in the building, called Nobility and Virtue defeating Ignorance. Unlike the other Tiepolo ceilings, this ceiling, painted in 1744-45, was not made for the Ca’ Rezzonico, but for the family of Pietro Barbarigo for his own house in Santa Maria del Giglio. It was bought by the city of Venice in 1934 and installed in the museum. The room also displays paintings by Venetian artists, including Pietro Longhi, Francesco Guardi, and two early works in oval frames by Giambattista Tiepolo from 1715-16. The furnishings also pieces of Venetian baroque furniture, including a gaming table, and an ornate painted secretary, or cabinet, used to hold previous objects, made in Germany in the 18th century.
The splendid figures of the allegories stand out from a sky of crystalline luminosity. The painting has a consistently light colour scheme with grey/silvery overtones which emphasise the iridescent orange of Virtue. In this case too Tiepolo was evidently greatly inspired by Paolo Veronese’s use of bright colours, but the pungent sensuality of the figures and the free, flowing application of the paint is wholly 18th-century in character.
An important painting in this room, high up on the wall to the left of the entrance, is the Portrait of the Architect Bartolomeo Ferracina, by Alessandro Longhi, the son of Pietro Longhi and the most famous late 18th-century Venetian portrait painter.
The furniture in this room is of different origins and high artistic value. The imposing walnut bureau-trumeau is unique for its size, workmanship and state of conservation, and was perhaps original to the palace. It is datable to the mid-18th century.
The large eight-legged billiard table with its green felt-covered top in the middle of the room is particularly interesting. It is a fine example of Venetian Baroque furniture, and its massy, monumental forms and lion-paw feet suggest that it was probably made in the late 17th or the early 18th century. The eight carved boxwood armchairs formerly belonged to the Correr family and were traditionally attributed to Andrea Brustolon, but considering the inferior quality of the carving are more likely to be the work of his workshop or of a contemporary imitator.
The door between the bureau-trumeau and the fireplace leads to a narrow passageway displaying white porcelain groups produced by the Venetian manufactory of Geminiano Cozzi and the one operated by Pasquale Antonibon in Nove.
Nobility and Virtue defeating Ignorance by Giambattista Tiepolo
San Rocco by Giuseppe Angeli
Giacomo il Maggiore by Giuseppe Angeli
St Martin of Tours by Giambattista Tiepolo
Saint Blaise by Giambattista Tiepolo
Old man with diadem by Giandomenico Tiepolo
Young man with helmet by Giandomenico Tiepolo
The library
(or Morlaiter hall) with four large bookcases filled with small sculptures in terra-cotta or baked earth by the Venetian sculptor Giovanni Maria Morlaiter (1699-1781), which were acquired for the museum by the City of Venice in 1935. The ceiling has a fresco on the same theme as the Tiepolo fresco in the Throne Room, Allegory of Merit, by Mattia Bortoloni.
Some examples from the workshop store of the sculptor Giovanni Maria Morlàiter have recently been placed in the four late 17th-century walnut cupboards. These include terracotta and rammed earth casts and models. The workshop store, which remained intact after the sculptor’s death, was sold to the heirs of the patrician Marcantonio Michièl, then passed into the Donà delle Rose collection, from which it was purchased by the Town Council of Venice in 1935. Altogether it consists of a hundred or so pieces, and is an extraordinary testimony to the creative methods of an 18thcentury sculptor, that is to say to the moment when the artist models the clay according to his first ideas which will then be transferred into the finished marble work. Alongside these preparatory studies, some beautifully-finished complete models have survived; these the sculptor presented to his clients for the final approval of the work. The examples displayed here reveal all Morlaiter’s artistic qualities. He was the sculptor most able to transfer the vibrant light effects of contemporary painting into the three-dimensional form; so much so that he was often compared for the freshness of his execution to Sebastiano Ricci, who was in fact his close friend.
In this selection we can admire the preparatory models for works made for churches, but also models for garden statues and portraits and a splendid model for a processional sign.
There is also a complete study for an altar relief, while the delightful little rammed earth cherubs in the showcase on the right were probably designed to be made in porcelain. The mask of a bearded man is the model for the arch keystone which can be seen in the courtyard of Ca’Rezzonico near the water entrance. In his workshop store Morlaiter also kept models by other sculptors. This is the case of the four busts and the pair of cherubs on the top shelves of the cupboards: these are the work of Enrico Merengo, Morlaiter’s master. Two rare models (only four are known of) showing a Ceres for a garden statue, and a preparatory Angel for the altar of the church of Santa Maria della Salute are instead by the sculptor Giusto Le Court, the so-called “Adriatic Bernini”, who introduced the forms of Roman Baroque to Venice.
A shaped canvas in a special stucco frame has been adapted for the ceiling. The painting, The Allegory of Merit is by a Rovigo artist, Mattia Bortoloni, a pupil of Antonio Balestra and prolific fresco painter in Venice, the Veneto, Lombardy and Piedmont.
Lazzarini Hall
The Lazzarini Hall takes its name from the Venetian painter Gregorio Lazzarini, from the end of the 17th century. The three large mythological paintings in the room were attributed to him in the 19th century. More recent scholarship attributes one painting in the room, Orpheus massacred by the Bacchanantes, to Lazzari. The others are now attributed to Antonio Bellucci and Antonio Molinari. The five oval paintings on the ceiling, also on mythological themes, are by Francesco Maffei, from the end of the 17th century. The room also features a very fine marquetry desk, inlaid with ivory and decorated with gilded bronze, by the ebenist Pietro Pifetti, signed and dated 1741.
In this room there are three Baroque paintings of imposing size. They are so big they practically cover the whole of the walls. Antonio Molinari is the author of the work on the wall in front of you, The Battle between Centaurs and Lapiths.
The painting Hercules and Omphalus to the right of the entrance door is by Antonio Bellucci, while Orpheus Torn to Pieces by the Bacchantes on the left is by Gregorio Lazzarini. These are three complex, elaborate narrative scenes painted by the major ‘experts’ of this field of Venetian art; they were already considered by their contemporaries to be the most famous painters working in Venice. The works thus show late 17th-century Venetian painting at its best, and although the names of their authors are now familiar only to specialists, in their time they were internationally famous. The paintings were commissioned by the procurator Vettòre Correr, who intended to place them in the so-called ‘Camaròn’, the main reception room of the palace. The themes as a whole illustrated the soul of Man devastated by passions and excesses. They may have been intended as an original, ambiguous, invitation to temperance for those banqueting in that room, where the heroes of mythology showed their least heroic side.
The ceiling is made up of five ovals inside gilded frames which stand out from the dark blue background. Again, this series of ceiling paintings was not originally part of the original furnishings of Ca’ Rezzonico, but was transferred into the Museum in 1936 from Palazzo Nani on the Cannarégio canal, along with the series now in the Brustolòn room. Decoration of ceilings with canvases set into exuberant wooden frames was typical of the late 17th century and preceded the widespread popularity of the fresco in the following century. In the centre we see Prometheus with the mirror given to him by Minerva, and the eagle. This is surrounded by other scenes showing Daedalus and Icarus, Prometheus released by Hercules, Perseus showing Atlas the head of Medusa, and Andromeda bound to the rock. The five ovals are the work of the Vicenza painter Francesco Maffei and are an excellent example of his exuberant, unconventional style, so different from the more composed, formal one of the paintings on the walls by his younger colleagues.
In the centre of the room stands a splendid writing-desk veneered in precious woods, with carved ivory inlays and gilded bronze rods. This is the work of the famous Turin cabinet-maker Pietro Piffetti, signed and dated 1741.
Brustolon Hall
The Brustolon Hall is devoted to the sculpted furniture and carved figures of Andrea Brustolon, the most celebrated Venetian baroque wood sculptor. The works displayed are dated 1706, and use different colored woods, including ebony, and extremely ornate baroque curves and twists to portray action and emotion. The room also features a notable chandelier with multi-colored glass in floral forms from the Murano glass workshop of Giuseppe Briani, made in the middle of the 18th century.
As we have seen in the ballroom, the ‘decorative furniture’ carved by Andrea Brustolon for the Venier family is considered the greatest masterpiece of early 18th-century Venetian carving. The most famous piece is certainly the console-cumvase- stand on the right wall of this room, at the bottom of which we see Hercules, the vanquisher of the Lernian Hydra, with Cerberus at his feet. On its shoulders Cerberus bears the upper surface, which is worked like a rough tree trunk, and shows three ebony blackamoors in chains holding up a large vase. At the two sides lie two bearded old men, each holding another two vases.
An identical, exceptional skilful inventiveness also appears in the splendid series of vase-stands with the allegories of the Four Seasons, the Four elements and Apollo symbolising the light.
The extraordinary care which went into the making of these furnishings reveals the high consideration and above all the value of the series of oriental (Chinese and Japanese) vases in Pietro Venier’s collection. It was for these that these precious, original stands were designed.
The ceiling decoration consists of eleven canvases of different shapes and sizes which come, like the five now in the previous room, from Palazzo Nani at Cannaregio, and are again the work of Francesco Maffei. In this case, identification of the extremely heterogeneous subjects is complex and inevitably to a certain extent unreliable. In the centre is the oval with Jove; around him, starting with the naked figure with a bunch of flowers representing The Sense of Smell and moving clockwise we see: Mercury, Apollo, Saturn, The Sense of Touch, Mars, Diana. Near the walls on the long sides are: The Sense of Hearing and Minerva as Divine Wisdom. The four monochrome tondos in the corners of the ceiling showing the Four Continents are by a different artist. They too come from a ceiling in Palazzo Nani but were painted over a century later by Francesco Polazzo.
In the centre of the room hangs the superb crystal glass chandelier with its two rows of 20 candle-holders and brightlycoloured glass paste flowers. This was produced towards the mid-18th century by the Murano factory of Giuseppe Briati, and is certainly the most extraordinary example of its kind to have come down to us intact.
Murano glass chandelier in the Brustolon Hall by Giuseppe Briani (mid-18th century)
Allegory of the fortitude by Nicolas Régnier
The suicide of Cato by Giambattista Langetti
Tantalus chained by Giambattista Langetti
Lot and his daughters by Pietro Ricchi
Ca ‘Rezzonico
Ca ‘Rezzonico is one of the most famous palaces of Venice, located in the district of Dorsoduro, overlooking the Grand Canal from Palazzo Contarini Michiel and Palazzo Nani Bernardo, not far from Ca’ Foscari.
The palace which houses the Museum of 18th-century Venice was built at the behest of the Bon family, one of the old noble families of the town. Halfway through the 17th century Filippo Bon commissioned the building from the most famous architect of his time, Baldassare Longhena, who also built Ca’ Pesaro and the basilica of La Salute. The monumental project proved however to be too ambitious for the Bon finances. The palace had not yet in fact been completed when the architect died in 1682 and soon afterwards, in view of the family’s inability to bear the considerable expense of the project, the works were brought to a halt and the building remained incomplete.
In 1750 Giambattista Rezzonico, whose family had recently received a noble title by paying a large sum of money, bought the building and commissioned Giorgio Massari, the fashionable architect of the time, to complete the works. The palazzo took the name of the Rezzonico family. The works were completed in just 6 years, in time to celebrate the family’s lightning rise in society, which peaked in 1758 when Carlo, Giambattista’s son, was elected pope under the name of Clement XIII. Their success was however fairly short-lived and had already come to an end with the next generation. Lacking male heirs, the family died out in 1810 with the death of Abbondio.
During the 19th century the palace changed owners several times and was gradually stripped of all its furnishings. Later tenants included the poet Robert Browning – who spent the summers of 1887 and 1888 in the palace, and died here in 1889 – and the composer and songwriter Cole Porter, who rented the premises from 1926 to 1927. It had been reduced to a mere empty receptacle when it was purchased by the city of Venice in 1935 to house the 18th-century art collections. In just a short time, furnishings were added to the paintings: everyday objects, also stripped frescoes or ceiling canvases from other city palaces. The result is an extraordinary environmental museum in whose rooms we can see works of one of the most fortunate periods of European art, together with the lavishness and splendor of an 18th-century Venetian mansion.
Ca ‘Rezzonico then underwent various disposals, during which it was stripped of the furnishings. In 1888 it was purchased for 250,000 lire by Robert Barrett Browning, son of the English writers Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who restored it thanks to the financial support of his wife, the American Fannie Coddington. Father Robert, who had financed the purchase, died there, in the mezzanine apartment, on December 12, 1889.
In 1906 Robert Barrett Browning, ignoring an offer made to him by Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, sold the palace to Count and Deputy Lionello Hierschel de Minerbi, who in 1935 sold it to the Municipality of Venice. Since 1936 it is therefore the seat of the Eighteenth-century Venetian Museum which, in addition to reconstructions of rooms with period furniture and furnishings, houses important pictorial works by Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Pietro Longhi, Tintoretto, as well as by Tiepolo and numerous terracotta sketches by Giovanni Maria Morlaiter.