Ca' Rezzonico - A journey into 18th-Century Venice

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. The visit extends itself over four floors, and the visitor can also rest or take a break in the large reception area, the cafè or the charming garden.

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.

On the ceiling there is the great fresco that gives the room its name. It was painted in the winter of 1757 by Giambattista Tiepolo, together with his son Giandomenico and the trompe l’oeil painter Gerolamo Mengozzi Colonna, on the occasion of the wedding between Ludovico Rezzonico and Faustina Savorgnan. Against a brilliant sky that opens up beyond the false balustrade, four impetuous white horses are pulling Apollo’s chariot, which bears the two spouses preceded by the blindfolded Cupid and surrounded by allegorical figures. These are Fame, the three Graces and Wisdom. A bearded old man crowned with laurel (Merit), with a Lion at his feet, symbol of the city, is holding a sceptre and a banner with the coats-of-arms of the two families. The solar quality of the light, the stupendous symphony of colours and the dynamic vigour of the figures make this fresco (one of the last works painted by Tiepolo in Venice) one of his greatest masterpieces. 

Here one can admire the third of Giambattista Tiepolo’s four ceilings in Ca’ Rezzonico: this is a modelled canvas representing Nobility and Virtue Defeating Perfidy. 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; it was then inherited by the Donà delle Rose family and in 1934 was purchased by the Venice Town Council to be exhibited in this room. The splendid figures of Nobility and Virtue in rich robes stand out against the bright sky; they are surrounded by the usual cohort of exquisite winged putti, together with two elegant pages as train-bearers. Perfidy, dressed in grey tones, is tumbling downards followed by a bat that a putto has caught on a string. The page is depicted with a delicate attention to detail and appears to have the artist’s child, Giuseppe Maria, as a model.

The second floor opens with a long Central Hall typical of Venetian palaces in which there are two early works by Canaletto; a must see is the room dedicated to frescos from Villa Zianigo by Tiepolo, or the Parlatorio Room or the Longhi Room. 

From this point on, starting with the scenes of Rinaldo Abandoning the Garden of Armida and the Falcon, one enters the area of the museum devoted to the recomposition of the cycle of frescoes by Giandomenico Tiepolo, painted from 1759 to 1797 for his villa which still exists at Zianigo, a small village near Mirano, in the countryside to the west of Venice. Almost all of them were removed in 1906 in order to be sold in France; but their exportation was blocked by the Ministry of Education and the works were purchased by the Venice Town Council and by the Italian State. They were transferred in 1936 to Ca’ Rezzonico, using a layout that attempted to reconstruct – although with a few differences and superimpositions – the original arrangement. The frescoes – restored in 1999 by Ottorino Nonfarmale thanks to the generous contribution of the members of the Venice International Foundation – are some of the most fascinating and striking works in Ca’ Rezzonico – indeed, of the second half of the century.

Here are exhibited two of the most famous paintings by Francesco Guardi, The Nuns' Parlour at San Zaccaria and the Ridotto of Palazzo Dandolo at San Moisè, painted in the second half of the 1740s.

They are two "interior views" which anticipate the views of the city that Francesco would begin to produce around the end of the following decade: note the liveliness of the miniature figures, which have the same freshness of touch and the same lightness of colour as those in his innumerable views of Venice. The Parlour shows the visitors’ room at the convent of San Zaccaria, where friends and relatives could chat with the nuns: on these festive occasions puppet-shows were put on for the younger visitors.

The room provides an interesting chance to compare two different spirits of the Venetian Settecento: the lively, sensuous rococo of Giambattista Tiepolo’s allegorical-mythological works, represented in the canvas on the ceiling with Zephyr and Flora, and the keenly ironic and critical spirit of the Venetian Enlightenment in Pietro Longhi’s “genre” pictures, on the walls. 

The third floor contains not only the noteworthy collection of paintings bequeathed by Egidio Martini but also the three rooms of the Ai Do San Marchi Pharmacy. Until 1908 the Pharmacy was in Campo San Stin in Venice and the furnishings were bought by a Parisian antiquarian, who then chose to donate them to the Musei Civici di Venezia. In 1936 the furniture and the objects were transferred to the third floor of Ca’ Rezzonico.