Ca\' d\' Oro

The Ca' d' Oro is one of the most beautiful palates of the Grand Channel with Venice. It owes its name (the gold house) with gilded external decorations and Polychrome S which decorated its walls.

The palate was built between 1421 and 1434 for Marino Contarini, prosecutor of Marc saint; conceived by the architect Marco d' Amadio, its construction and its decoration are due to the architects and sculptors Matteo Raverti, Giovanni Bon and his/her son Bartolomeo Bon; these two last are known for their work with the Palais of the Doges and in particular for the Porta della Carta and its monumental sculpture of the Judgment of Solomon.

Ca' d' Oro, represents an good example of the style which marks the passage of the Gothique to the Renaissance in Venice.

The networks of gallery with 1st and 2nd stages, the parapets of the windows and the balconies show forms clearly still belonging to the late Gothic; the colonnade of the Ground floor and the small square windows of the right wing already evoke, as for them, the Renaissance style.

The building remained unfinished and the missing left wing explains the asymmetry of the frontage.

With the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, the palate at several times changed owners. One two, at the 19th century, the ballerina Marie Taglioni, destroyed (what today can be regarded as an act of Vandalisme) the Gothic staircase of the interior court as well as the balconies giving on this same court.

In 1922, Ca' d' Oro was bequeathed at the Italian State by its last owner and saver, the baron Giorgio Franchetti who had acquired it in 1894. After important restorations intended to return its gloss of antan to him (including the rebuilding of the staircase in particular), it accommodates from now on the Galerie Giorgio Franchetti and exposes paintings of the schools Tuscany and Flemish, inter alia the Saint Sebastien (1490) of Andrea Mantegna, of the sculptures.

Related article

Sources, references

  • Richard J. Goy: The House off Gold: building has de luxe hotel in medieval Venice , Cambridge: Cambridge University Near, 1992. ISBN 0-521-40513-0

External bonds

  • Gallery Giorgio Franchetti

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