The monumental Palazzo Rezzonico, designed by B. Longhena and G. Massari, is the location of the museum which offers an insight into a whole age. Alongside precious furniture and decorations, it hosts major paintings by Venetian artists of the 18th century, such as Giandomenico and GiambattistaTiepolo, Rosalba Carriera, Canaletto and the Longhi and Guardi families.

Important donations have recently enriched the museum’s collections with over 300 works by such artists as Cima da Conegliano, Alvise Vivarini, Bonifacio de’ Pitati, Tintoretto, Sebastiano and Marco Ricci, and more works by the Tiepolo and Longhi families, Rosalba Carriera and Francesco Guardi.

It is divided into three important horizontal bands: the ground floor, enriched with rusticated decorations and a three-hole water portal with architrave and two noble floors, characterized by columns and round windows with head in key. Each floor ends with paired columns. The attic mezzanine is characterized by oval mullioned windows, hidden in the articulated design of the facade.

The map of the Palace is more complex than ever: it has a large ballroom, which occupies two floors in height, connected to the ground floor by a majestic monumental staircase. Apart from this extraordinary exception, the Palazzo is organized according to a traditional plan: in the center it has a large portego, which overlooks both the Grand Canal and the central courtyard: smaller rooms develop on both sides.

Tapestry room
Tapestry room features three large Flemish tapestries from the end of the 17th century, as well as sculpted and gilded furniture from the period. The ceiling frescoes represent The Triumph of Virtue, by Jacopo Guarana. The yellow door is also notable; it portrays a lacquered painting of a Chinese man with a parasol, surrounded by floral motifs, and dates from 1760.

The ceiling of this room is decorated with a complex allegorical painting also done in the winter of 1757/58 by Jacopo Guarana, one of the most prolific fresco painters in the Venetian palaces, who carried on Tiepolo’s work after this artist’s departure for Spain. In the composition we can recognize Fortitude with the helmet, and Temperance; then, higher up, Marital Harmony and Valour with the lion. On the left are Justice and Prudence; higher up Eternity with the sun and moon, Abundance, and Glory. In the corners are the theological Virtues.

The rich decorative frescoed cornice surrounding the central scene is the work of the quadratura or architectural trompe-l’oeil painter Piero Visconti, who collaborated with Guarana in other circumstances too. Guarana, who here was just beginning his career, immediately revealed a stylistic and cultural orientation which were very different from Tiepolo’s. He abandoned bold perspectives, presenting a composition which stretched over a single visual plane, the figures being arranged in coy poses and described with careful, meticulous brushstrokes.

Guarana’s colour scheme consists of delicate half-tones, very different from his master’s dazzling palette. The room takes its name from three 18th-century Flemish wall-tapestries with scenes from the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Like the magnificent furniture in this room, the tapestries come from palazzo Balbi Valier at Santa Maria Formosa. The refined workmanship of the tables with their green marble tops, the armchairs, the rare three-seater sofa, the two gheridòns (or three-legged tables), the curtainholders (called buonegrazie in Venetian), make this one of the most remarkable suites of furniture in the Venetian Rococo style to have survived intact. The sinuosity of the legs of the furniture, and the delicate ornamentation of the surfaces, which imitates the asymmetries of sea foam and broken shells, are typical of mid-18th century late Rococo; they also demonstrate the change in taste as compared with the furniture made by Brustolon fifty years previously, as regards both form and materials.

In this room we find the sole surviving element of the original furnishings, that is to say the lacquered door decorated with oriental patterns, a testimony to the great 18th-century passion for chinoiserie. This very rare example is datable around 1760; some scholars have suggested that it may have been based on drawings by Giambattista or Giandomenico Tiepolo, at the time working on the frescoes of the palace’s rooms. On the shorter walls, above the two chest of drawers, two wooden sculptures by Andrea Brustolon representing the Penitent Magdalene and the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius, are displayed.

Pastel room
Pastel room was originally a room for holding audiences; in that room the Papal Legate informed Cardinal Rezzonico that he had been elected Pope the day before. The ceiling is decorated with frescos depicting the Triumph of the Arts over Ignorance, presented in a tromp-l’oeil painted frame, with allegorical scenes painted in the corners. The paintings, particularly The Triumph of Poetry, date from the time when Tiepolo was working in the main salon, and are usually attributed to either Giambattista Crosato or Gaspare Diziani of Belluno. The room takes its name from the number of pastel portraits by Rosalba Carriera and other notable Venetian artists. They include a fine pastel portrait of the opera singer Faustina Bordoni by Carriera. Another notable pastel portrait is that of Cecilia Guardi Tiepolo, wife of the painter Tiepolo, painted by her son Lorenzo. It was painted in 1757.

Besides Giambattista Tiepolo, other important Venetian fresco painters participated in the decoration of the wedding apartment. This room was decorated by Gaspare Diziani, one of the most active mid-18th century artists in this field. On the ceiling he painted a theme which was particularly dear to Venetian nobility, the Triumph of the Arts over Ignorance.

Diziani presents us with a swarm of allegorical figures, each one holding the tools of his particular art and painted in the warm, bright colours learnt from his master Sebastiano Ricci.

On the walls are a collection of portraits in pastels, a technique which originated in France in the Renaissance but which reached its peak during the 18th century. The particular features of pastels, applied to a paper or cardboard support, are their softness, rapid use and the possibility of overlapping various layers of colour. This allows perfect reproduction of texture, and particularly of human skin, which caused it to become the favourite technique for portraits. Although the pastel technique originated and flourished in France, it was the Venetian woman artist Rosalba Carriera who exploited it to its utmost, and gave it a more modern, striking texture. The work of Rosalba Carriera, the most famous Italian woman artist in Europe for the whole of the 18th century, is exemplified in the portrait to the left of the door you came in by, Portrait of gentleman in red, where she captures the main features of the subject’s personality, depicting his fleshy, wilful mouth and penetrating gaze. The scintillating tones of the pastels light up the whole picture and the impact of the image is increased through the contrast of the vermillion jacket and the luminous face.

On the wall to your right, past the door which leads onto the Portego (large central hall), another two of her masterpieces are displayed: the Portrait of Sister Maria Caterina and Portrait of the contralto Faustina Bordoni Hasse. Comparing the two, we can perceive Rosalba’s mastery of differing emotional registers, her exceptional skill in interpreting the human soul. We see the benevolent spirituality of the nun, who died in the odour of sanctity in 1734, contrasted with the energetic, shrewd expression of the singer, who was a real primadonna, a protagonist of 18th-century opera. The fine portrait in the middle of the following wall is by Lorenzo Tiepolo. It shows his mother Cecilia Guardi Tiepolo, the wife of Giambattista Tiepolo and the sister of Antonio and Francesco Guardi. Notice in particular the delicate tones and the nuances of colour which make this painting, done when Lorenzo was only 21 years old, a work of refined quality.

The four small display cases along the walls contain porcelain from the collection of Marino Nani Mocenigo. Particularly noteworthy are the pieces belonging to a Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate set with bird and rock décor in gold on a blue background, also known as Hausmaler, from the Meissen manufactory.

Madonna orante – Rosalba Carriera
Ritratto di gentiluomo in rosso- Rosalba Carriera
Suor Maria Caterina Puppi – Rosalba Carriera
Faustina Bordoni – Rosalba Carriera
Lucietta Sartori – Rosalba Carriera
Giambattista Sartori – Rosalba Carriera
Gerolamo Maria Balbi – Marianna Carlevaris
Cornelia Foscolo Balbi – Marianna Carlevaris
Caterina Balbi – Marianna Carlevaris
Marco Balbi – Marianna Carlevaris
Ritratto di un bambino nobile – Gian Antonio Lazzari
Ritratto di un nobile – Gian Antonio Lazzari
Ritratto di gentildonna – Gian Antonio Lazzari
Cecilia Guardi Tiepolo – Lorenzo Tiepolo

Nuptial allegory room
The Salon of the Allegory, a room decorated to commemorate the 1758 marriage of Ludovico Rezzonico, the nephew of Pope Clement XIII Rezzonico, and future procurator of San Marco, to Faustina Savorgnan, is also on the Piano Nobile. The ceiling has a large fresco by Giambattista Tiepolo and his son, Giandomenico Tiepolo, depicting the groom and his bride ferried by Apollo’s chariot. It was one of the last works of Tiepolo in Venice, before his departure for Madrid in 1762. Tiepolo completed the work on the ceiling in only twelve days on the scaffolding. The Tiepolo fresco, like the paintings in the Grand salon, is framed by trompe l’oeil paintings of architecture, including a false balustrade, by Girolamo Mengozzi Colonna, who also did the painted frames in the Grand Salon. The painting depicts the bridal couple in a chariot, being led by the sun god, Apollo. Other allegorical figures include cupid blindfold, a flight of putti and doves, the figure of Fame, holding a trumpet; the three graces on a cloud; a bearded old man with a laurel crown symbolizing Merit; and a lion, the symbol of Venice, along with coats of arms of the two families.

In the winter of 1757, the wedding between Ludovico Rezzonico and Faustina Savorgnan took place. For the occasion, the row of rooms along the san Barnaba canal, intended as the spouses’ reception apartment, was frescoed.

In this circumstance, Giambattista Tiepolo was also present. Helped once more by Girolamo Mengozzi, he painted the Nuptial allegory on the ceiling of this room in just 12 days. Pairs of satyrs painted by Tiepolo’s son Giandomenico are leaning against a fake ochre and green marble parapet, and beyond this is an architectural structure, ending a balustrade which opens onto the sky. The two spouses are presented to the viewer riding on Apollo’s chariot; they are preceded by the blindfolded Cupid, while some allegorical figures surround the main group. Among these we can recognise: Fame, blowing her trumpet; the Graces sitting on a cloud just under the wedding chariot; Truth with the sun in her hand; and Merit, a bearded old man crowned with laurels with St. Mark’s lion at his feet and holding a banner with the coats-of-arms of the wedding couple’s families. Varying the points of view for the arrangement of the figures, the painter creates a dynamic, plausible image where even the paradoxical appears as concrete. Only Giambattista Tiepolo’s imagination and skill would have been able to imagine the couple’s arrival directly on the chariot of the sun, and to render it credible at the same time.

This room also contains the Portrait of Carlo Rezzonico, son of Giambattista, the first owner of the palace, and the uncle of Ludovico, who became pope in 1758 with the name of Clement XIII. The painting is by Anton Raphael Mengs, the philosopher painter who was the friend of Winckelmann and the first protagonist of Neoclassical painting.

Reportedly, the painting was originally intended to be displayed in the family palace in Venice, but shortly after its execution it was moved to Rome, where the Pope’s nephew, Cardinal Abbondio Rezzonico, had taken up residence.

On the right wall is the small chapel built in the second half of the 18th century. Framed by an elegant rococo decoration with gilded stuccowork against a white background, the painting of the Madonna and Saints is by Francesco Zugno, a pupil of Giambattista Tiepolo. The glass cases lining the walls of the room display porcelain from different European manufactories from the collection of Marino Nani Mocenigo.

The furnishings of the salon included paintings and furnishings by Italian artists of the first half and mid-18th century, including portrait of Pope Clement XIII Rezzonico by Anton Raphael Mengs, a retable by Francesco Zugno, a pupil of Tiepolo, and a prie-dieu of carved walnut illustrating the fantasy of the Italian rococo style.

A passage from the Salon leads to a small chapel, suspended over the Rio San Barnaba. The chapel was built by either Aurelio Rezzonico or Cardinal Rezzonico, the nephew of Pope Clement XIII, in the second half of the 18th century. Some of the original decoration remains, including the sculpted and gilded rococo stucco sculpture on the white walls, and a retable, The Virgin and Saints, by a pupil of Tiepolo, Francesco Zugno, and prie-dieu, or seat for kneeling and praying, in the twisting and turning Venetian rococo style.

Wedding couple in chariot on the ceiling of the Salon of the Allegory, by Giambattista Tiepolo (1758)
Francesco Falier by Bernardino Castelli
The holy family and St. John the Baptist, by Francesco Zugno
Tapestry with arms of the Tiepolo family

Ballroom
The Palazzo’s ceremonial rooms are located on the piano nobile. The largest and most impressive is the grand salon or ballroom, fourteen by twenty-four meters in size, at the rear of the building. This room, created by Massari, is of double height, and appears even higher because of the trompe l’oeil architecture painted on the walls and ceiling by Girolamo Mengozzi Colonna (not by Pietro Visconti, as long believed). The centerpiece of the ceiling, painted by Giovanni Battista Crosato, depicts Apollo riding his carriage between Europe, Asia, Africa and The Americas. The coat of arms of the Rezzonico family, with a double-headed eagle, also is prominently displayed on the wall of the ballroom facing the entry door. The two enormous chandeliers made of wood and gilded metal, from the mid-18th century, are among the few fixtures that date to the original period of the building. The ballroom is now decorated with 18th century statues by Andrea Brustolon, including a statue of an Ethiopian warrior carved of ebony.

70 years after Longhena’s death, Giorgio Massari created two new areas over the old ones, which added to the spectacular effect of his predecessor’s project: the staircase and a large ballroom. The latter monumental room, made by demolishing the ceiling and thus exploiting the whole height of the two main floors, was unrivalled in Venice as regards both its size and the quality of its painted decorations.

It was 1751. Since Tiepolo was away in Germany working for the bishop prince of Wurzburg, the painting of the frescoes was commissioned from a highly original artist, Giambattista Crosato, fresh from his successes as Savoy court painter in Turin. As recent studies have revealed, Girolamo Mengozzi Colonna, Giambattista Tiepolo’s great quadratura or architectural trompe-l’oeil painter, who had remained in Venice after his friend’s departure, collaborated with Crosato. Mengozzi Colonna created here an highly effective illusionist space. Stretching behind a front order of gigantic pilaster strips with gilded capitals alternating with fake statues, is a perimeter of grey marble columns. These support an architrave in red Verona stone, faking the module of the actual front doorway. In the upper part the artist has expanded the space, suggesting a flight of rooms beyond the loggias and the balconies painted at the sides.

In the middle of the ceiling, Giambattista Crosato has shown Apollo the sun god, rising with his chariot to radiate the four parts of the world, which are personified here by girls of different races. This subject was frequent in patrician residences because it was considered auspicious, alluding to the radiant future awaiting the palace owner. And it is the Rezzonico family itself which welcomes us into the ballroom, with their grandiose gigantic coat-of-arms on the wall in front of the door.

The room is a heraldic and allegorical exaltation of the owners; the two-headed eagles of their coat-of-arms is repeated on all the column capitals. Rarely however has painting celebrated itself and its illusionist potential as it does here. The visitor is transported into a magical, fairytale atmosphere within the walls of a family home.

The only pieces of the original furnishings remaining are the two majestic wooden chandeliers with floral patterns in gilded metal. Along the walls we find lavish ornamental furnishings in ebony and boxwood by Andrea Brustolon, one of the greatest Baroque sculptors of wood, christened by Honoré de Balzac “le Michel Ange du bois”.

There are 40 or so pieces, some of which are displayed in the room specifically dedicated to Brustolon. The series was originally created for palazzo Venier at San Vio, and includes chairs, vase-bearing statues and ornamental figures of Ethiopian slaves and warriors. The sculptor’s imagination has transformed the various elements of the furnishings into an opulent triumph of intertwined branches and actual fullyformed sculptures. The frames of the 12 monumental chairs are in the same materials. Not one of these chairs is the same as any other. Here Brustolon’s imagination had a field day, inventing different legs and armrests which reproduced tree branches supported by telamons, and with little fauns and exotic cupids peeping through them. It is probably the most sumptuous group of Venetian furnishings which has come down to us, and it reveals the exuberant decorative taste of Venetian Baroque.

The Chariot of Apollo fresco on the ceiling of the ballroom, by Giovanni Battista Crosato (1753)
Trompe L’Oeil decoration of the ballroom ceiling by Girolamo Mengozzi Colonna

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.