The Births and Rebirths of Venice: A fine exhibition at Palazzo Ducale
On an unusually warm and sunny day for Venice in November, I visited the great exhibition, held at the splendid Palazzo Ducale, celebrating 1600 years of the city since its legendary founding on 24 March 421.
Venice, the Ducal Palace. Photograph by Margherita Palumbo.
Undertaking to represent 1600 years of history poses a tremendous challenge to exhibition organizers: it could easily have resulted in a mere succession of items, or even a series of masterpieces held together by the single common denominator of having being produced in Venice over sixteen centuries, a sort of ‘flat’ or ‘empty’ celebration as many blockbuster exhibitions unfortunately are. By contrast, the numerous artworks, books and documents displayed in the rooms of the Ducal palace allow visitors to travel through an itinerary of critical episodes in the city’s history, guiding them on a journey that is both evocative and informative, brimming with ideas, inspiration, and above all points of reflection about the future of this marvelous city.
The exhibition is cleverly organized around the two key concepts expressed in its title: Venetia 1600. Nascite e Rinascite, i.e. Venetia 1600. Births and Rebirths.
The meaning behind the ‘Births and Rebirths’ of Venice is explained by the exhibition’s curators – Robert Echols, Frederick Ilchman, Gabriele Matino, and Andrea Bellieni – in the wonderful accompanying catalogue, published under the scientific direction of Gabriella Belli by the Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia:
Venice had many fresh starts, multiple births and rebirths, from the Middle Ages until the fall of the Republic on 1797 and even afterward. These events define the history of Venice and the Venetian character. The city flourished precisely because it was able to reinvent itself in the face of challenge or disaster. We felt that marking these key episodes and monuments would offer insights into the Venetian past that could help chart a path for the future.
(Venetia 1600. Births and Rebirths, p. 23)
The exhibition approaches the history of the city from this perspective, moving from its legendary founding on Annunciation Day in 421 up to Venice as ‘Capital of Contemporary Art’, thanks to the institution of the Biennale and the activity of several museums and galleries, including the first ‘foreign’ collection in Venice, the house-museum of Peggy Guggenheim, which opened to the public in 1951.
Between these two extremes, visitors pass through the construction of the Basilica of Saint Mark and representations of its emblem, the winged lion, along with the peculiarities of Venice’s republican government, the election of the Doge, and the allegory of Venice as Justice.
Room 2. Venice as Justice, wooden statue adorning the prow of the Bucintoro, ca. 1526 (Venice, Museo Storico Navale).
Moving through the centuries, walls and showcases display the birth of an extraordinary maritime empire; its relationship to China and to the Islamic world; the city’s building and rebuilding; its legacy of great artistic commissions; the magnificent growth of theatre and opera; sumptuous feasts and the carnival.
Room 8. Women’s, men’s, and children’s dress of the 17th and 18th centuries (Venice, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo); Harlequin costume, ca. 1950 (Venice, Museo Casa di Carlo Goldoni). At the centre, a model of the Bucintoro of 1700.
Dramatic events also unfold in the exhibition rooms: political crises and military defeats; fires destroying monuments, churches, theatres, and even, in 1577, the Ducal Palace; the devastating plagues of 1576 and 1630; the end of the Serenissima on 12 May 1797, the Napoleonic conquest, Austrian domination, and the collapse of the Campanile of San Marco on 14 July 1902, to name a few.
Room 7. Domenico Tintoretto, Venice supplicating the Virgin to Intercede with Christ to End the Plague, 1631, oil on canvas (Venice, Church of San Francesco alla Vigna), detail.
It would be impossible to fully convey the richness of the exhibition – a richness that is especially remarkable given the specific choice made by the organizers: “rather than borrowing Venetian treasures and temporarily returning them for a few months” the aim “was to prioritize artistic treasure still in Venice” (p. 23).
Room 6. Paolo Caliari (called Veronese), Dialectic or Industry, 1575-1578, oil on canvas (Venice, Palazzo Ducale).
Of particular interest among the countless treasures on display are those exhibited in Room 4, dedicated to Venice as the ‘City of Merchants’. The selection here reminds us – through the continuous alternation of births and rebirths – that even the flourishing Venetian trade of the Cinquecento was not exempt from disaster, as with the terrible fires that destroyed the Fondaco dei Tedeschi – the headquarters of German merchants – in 1504 and, in 1514, the Rialto markets, which were then promptly rebuilt on behalf of Doge Leonardo Loredan.
Room 5. Vittore Carpaccio (attr.), Doge Leonardo Loredan, 1501-1505, oil on panel (Venice, Museo Correr).
Here, visitors can admire a series of Venetian coins – the denaro, the grosso, the lira, the zecchino, and of course the ducato d’oro – amongst walls hung with exceptional eighteenth-century oil-painted panels representing the many guilds active in the city, for a fine presentation of the wealth of goods produced and the liveliness of trade.
The showcases display luxury goods passed through the Venetian market, such as elaborately engraved candlesticks, camei in onyx or malachite, intagli in quarz or sardonyx, precious velvet clothing, and the Barovier Drinking Cup – the magnificent turquoise glass goblet created around 1470 and now preserved at the Museo del Vetro in Murano.
There are also a number of treasure-bindings here, such as the splendid one created in the last quarter of the sixteenth century for a Commissione to a member of the Zane family, which is now held by the Museo Correr. The magnificent decoration of this binding immediately recalls a spectacular dogale masterpiece that passed through our hands, made in the same years for no less than the Venetian theologian and historian Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623), celebrated author of the Historia del Concilio Tridentino.
A spectacular dogale binding made for Paolo Sarpi. [Aristoteles (384-322 A.C.)]. Ethicorum Nicomachiorum paraphrasis. Leiden, Jan Paedts Jacobszon, 1607. This item is sold, but the description is available to read in the 2009 catalogue The First 49 Stories about Books (number XLIV).
On the upper cover of both bindings is the Lion en moeca, i.e. the Venetian variant of the Lion of Saint Mark, the great patron saint of Venice. Moeca is the local word for a lagoon crab, and refers here to the lion’s wings, displayed in a way that resembles a crab.
Room 4 also includes a small section dedicated to the Venetian book trade, introduced by a panel entitled The Ducat and the Book, in which the circulation of the Venetian printed book is compared with that of the golden ducat, defined as the ‘dollar of the Middle Ages’.
Venice here is presented as the City of Merchants, as well as the City of Printers, Publishers, Booksellers, and Wood- and punchcutters. The only printer mentioned in this brief introductory text is, unsurprisingly, Aldus Manutius, whose name is perhaps the only one capable of competing with the numerous great Venetian artists on display in the exhibition. Of course, as we aim to demonstrate in our posts and catalogues, the variety of Venetian printing is dazzling, reaching far beyond the Aldine anchor, but for efforts designed with a general audience in mind Manutius continues to prove an effective figure for representing the potential impact of the history of the book on the history of culture.
The Aldine anchor and dolphin device, from Aldus’s 1505 edition of Bembo’s Gli Asolani (see the description here).
The exhibition closes with a poignant look at the present and above all the possible future of this unique city, at once magnificent in its grandeur and extremely fragile. The walls of the last room present black-and-white images of crowds invading the city’s calli and ponti, cruise ships going down the Grand Canal, and finally the dramatic acqua alta, or high water, that devastated Venice on 12 November 2019, its worst flooding since 1966.
A cruise ship in Venice in May 2016. Photograph by Margherita Palumbo.
Ever present in the background of the exhibition is, of course, the Covid-19 pandemic. The exhibition itself could not open as planned on 25 March 2021, and room 7, dedicated to the devastating outbreaks of 1576 and 1630, went from being a reconstruction of the past to a highly effective representation of the conflict between public health and business interests – a theme of the greatest newness and significance.
In this room, various documents attest to measures imposed by the Venetian Provveditori alla Sanità, or Boards of Health, such as the quarantine of people and goods.
Room 7. Two loose sheets containing orders issued by the ‘Provveditori alla Sanità’ (Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr).
The medical countermeasures put in place against the disease hold particular resonance in 2021. Indeed, claims today that scientists and physicians advocating quarantine and lockdowns are insufficiently responsive to the needs of workers and businesses echo almost word for word complaints made some four hundred years ago during Venice’s deadly plague. The similarity would be funny if it were not so tragic.
(Venetia 1600. Births and Rebirths, pp. 25-26)
The global pause due to the pandemic turned Venice – along with every city in the world, large or small – into an image of emptiness, “as if painted by Giorgio de Chirico”:
The deserted Ponte of Rialto, November 2020, 19.00 pm. Photograph by Margherita Palumbo.
The incredibly still view of Grand Canal from the Ponte dell’Accademia, November 2020, at noon. Photograph by Margherita Palumbo.
The effect of deserted Venice was simultaneously poetic and chilling. How could this city survive without tourists? What would become of the people whose livelihoods depend on these visitors? Who would pay for the upkeep of all that splendid architecture? Further questions arose: What should Venice be like after the pandemic has receded? What is the proper balance between locals and tourists?
(Venetia 1600. Births and Rebirths, pp. 19-20)
I left the Ducal Palace with these questions mulling in mind, contemplating the possibility of a sustainable rebirth of Venice. The exhibition had indeed achieved its goal.
How to cite this information
Margherita Palumbo, "The Births and Rebirths of Venice: A fine exhibition at Palazzo Ducale," 1 December 2021, www.prphbooks.com/blog/venice-1600-exhibition. Accessed [date].This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.