Insight Pocket Guide: Italy by Insight Guides

Author:Insight Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Italy
Publisher: Apa Publications
Published: 2017-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

Tintoretto’s Miracle of St Mark, in the Accademia

Chris Coe/Apa Publications

Peggy Guggenheim Collection

To the east of the Accademia along the Grand Canal, a breath of the 20th century awaits at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection of modern art in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni (www.guggenheim-venice.it; Wed–Mon 10am–6pm). Home of the American heiress until her death in 1979, this unfinished 18th-century palace provides a delightful canal-side setting for one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of modern art. Picasso, Duchamp, Magritte, Kandinsky, Klee, Chagall, Dalí, Bacon and Sutherland are all represented here, but it is known above all for its works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell. In the garden are sculptures by Giacometti, Henry Moore and the collector’s husband, Max Ernst. Guggenheim and her dogs are buried here.

Where the Grand Canal empties into the lagoon stands the imposing church of Santa Maria della Salute (http://basilicasalutevenezia.it; Mon–Sat 9.30am–5.30pm, Sun 9.30am–noon and 3–5.30pm). Called La Salute by the Venetians, Santa Maria is the masterpiece of Baldassare Longhena, built to mark the city’s deliverance from a plague in 1630. For a Baroque edifice, the interior is rather sober, even chaste. One of Tintoretto’s best, the Marriage at Cana, is opposite the entrance, while three vivid Titian canvases decorate the chancel: Cain and Abel, Abraham Sacrificing Isaac and David and Goliath, their drama heightened by the perspective di sotto in su (looking up from below).

To the west of the Accademia, the 18th-century Ca’ Rezzonico (www.carezzonico.visitmuve.it; Wed–Mon 10am–5pm), is now a museum of 18th-century life, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, dedicated to those swan-song years of Venice’s Most Serene Republic. When the last of the wealthy Rezzonico family disappeared, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning bought the palazzo and the poet died in here in 1889. The extravagant ballroom and soaring allegorical frescoes such as Giambattista Tiepolo’s Merit between Virtue and Nobility in the ‘Throne Room’ and others, more wistful, by Guardi, all catch the tone of a declining Venice and the frivolous lives of the rich. Opposite the Ca’ Rezzonico is Palazzo Grassi (www.palazzograssi.it; Wed–Mon 10am–7pm, last entry 6pm), bought by the French businessman François Pinault to showcase his stunning collection of modern art.

At the tip of the peninsula the Punta della Dogana (same hours and website as Palazzo Grassi) exhibits further works from Pinault’s collection. The superbly sited former Customs House was converted in 2009 by Japanese architect Tadao Ando into a contemporary art gallery (Wed–Mon 10am–7pm, last entry 6pm).

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