Venice's Doge's Palace picture gallery reopens with new layout

The Quadreria of the Doge’s Palace in Venice reopens on Saturday, March 25, 2023. The intervention was conducted by the Venice Civic Museums Foundation with the collaboration and support of Venice International Foundation.

The current rearrangement, which involves the Hall of the Criminal Quarantia, the Hall of the Hides and the Hall of the Magistrate of the Laws, follows a tradition dating back to the first decades of the 17th century, when “easel” works from illustrious private collections were desired to be exhibited inside the Palace alongside “institutional” paintings. This was the case with the paintings bequeathed to the Ducal Palace by Cardinal Domenico Grimani. Works of Flemish origin, foreign to the Venetian painting tradition, but soon became permanent presences in the rooms of the Palace.

“In homage to that centuries-old tradition, it was decided to dedicate,” said Chiara Squarcina, head of the museum office, "the Sala dei Cuoi to the exhibition of Flemish works, including the only survivor of those offered for public enjoyment in the Palace since 1615: that Inferno formerly attributed to Civetta (Henry Met de Bles) and today more appropriately traced to an anonymous follower of Bosch or the Christ Mocked by Quentin Metsys. Examples of the Serenissima’s cultural relations with the rest of Europe."

Other rooms display masterpieces by Bellini, Titian, and Tiepolo, supreme masters of Venetian art, such as Giambattista Tiepolo’s Venice Receives the Gifts of the Sea from Neptune, Giovanni Bellini ’s Pietà and Titian’s Madonna and Child with Two Angels, as well as Carpaccio’s Lion of the Marching Andante, which will be on view within these spaces after the conclusion of the anthological exhibition at the Doge’s Palace. Surviving masterpieces of a much richer heritage, now partly dispersed or passed to state institutions.

Alongside the surviving works, the Quadreria houses a nucleus of valuable canvases and panels granted on long-term deposit from a private collection. Among the paintings are Titian’s Portrait of a Lady with Daughter(Double Portrait, formerly Barbarigo Collection), The Angel Announces Martyrdom to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, by Jacopo Tintoretto (once in the small church of San Geminiano in St. Mark’s Square and more recently in the David Bowie Collection) and Artemisia Gentileschi’s Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy, as well as works by Giovanni Cariani, Antoon van Dyck and Maerten de Vos.

Luigi Brugnaro, Mayor of Venice, recalls how the Municipal Administration and the MUVE Foundation are also engaged in perhaps less obvious but equally fundamental interventions. Such as the complex campaign of functional upgrading of the Doge’s Palace, financed by the City Council, which involves monitoring and interventions on the decorative apparatus (ceilings and walls). “The work, which is already underway,” Mayor Brugnaro commented, “will make it possible to have a reasoned database on the state of conservation of the inspected surfaces that can function as an input for the design and planning of restoration work. Bas-reliefs, Istrian stones, marbles from the most diverse quarries in relation to their color, friezes that embellish that extraordinary treasure chest of art, history and myth that is the Doge’s Palace, the ancient seat of power of the Serenissima that we have a duty to preserve in all its magneficiency.”

Alongside structural interventions, the City Council and Foundation are working to make visits to the Doge’s Palace even more unmissable. Mariacristina Gribaudi, President of the MUVE Foundation, in thanking the Venice International Foundation as an example of cultural patronage from which the Civic Museums of Venice benefit, recalls the unmissable exhibition on Carpaccio and announces the opening, in a few weeks, of a new Secret Itinerary, to discover places originally inaccessible to the public. The President also anticipates that, “after Artemisia Gentileschi, the Sala della Quarantia Civil Vecchia will welcome new Guests at the Palace over the course of the year: works, from the rich art collections of the Venice Civic Museums Foundation and not always accessible to the public, which will alternate with other, equally important works from prestigious private collections.”

“Venice International Foundation and the Venice Civic Museums Foundation,” said Venice International Foundation President, architect Luca Bombassei, “have long been linked by a bond of vision and perspective, aimed at the protection of an immense artistic and cultural heritage that belongs to all of us. Thanks to the contribution of our associates, VIF has decided to support such an important restoration operation because we think that evolution is one of the peculiar characteristics of Venice, a city capable of continuous transformation while maintaining its identity. In this case, it means returning to admire magnificent masterpieces that will acquire new life thanks to Maestro Pier Luigi Pizzi’s staging and the prodigious balance between hand, mind and matter of the Venetian artisans and master restorers who worked for VIF in the Quadreria. The result is extraordinary because it was based on human value, that intangible engine that allows one to set goals and then achieve them, react to difficulties, and innovate in technique and methods. I have always thought that art is like a time machine that opens a door to crucial moments in history, helping new generations understand the present. With the reopening of the Quadreria, Venice Foundation and all its partners make it possible for this wonderful journey to begin again.”

Image: Giambattista Tiepolo, Neptune Offers Venice the Gifts of the Sea (1757-1758; oil on canvas, 135 x 275 cm; Venice, Doge’s Palace).

Venice's Doge's Palace picture gallery reopens with new layout

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