![Ca' Cappello Layard Carnelutti (Venice)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Ca%27_Cappello_Layard_Carnelutti_%28Venice%29.jpg)
The Palazzo or Ca' Cappello Layard is a palace situated in the
sestiere
A (plural: ) is a subdivision of certain Italian towns and cities. The word is from (‘sixth’), so it is thus used only for towns divided into six districts. The best-known example is the ''sestieri'' of Venice, but Ascoli Piceno, Genoa, Mi ...
of
San Polo
San Polo ( vec, San Poło) is the smallest and most central of the six sestieri of Venice, northern Italy, covering 86 acres (35 hectares) along the Grand Canal. It is one of the oldest parts of the city, having been settled before ...
of
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
, Italy, overlooking the
Grand Canal at the confluence between this and the smaller Rio di San Polo and Rio delle Erbe. On the Grand canal, it is located between
Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza
The Palazzo Barbarigo dalla Terrazza is a Renaissance-style palace on the Grand Canal, across the Rio San Polo from the Palazzo Cappello Layard and adjacent to the Palazzo Pisani Moretta in the sestiere of San Polo, in Venice, Italy. In 2015, ...
and
Palazzo Grimani Marcello
The Palazzo Grimani Marcello, also known as ''Giustinian Querini'' is a Renaissance-style palace in located on the Grand Canal, between the Palazzo Querini Dubois and the Palazzo Cappello Layard in the sestiere of San Polo of Venice
Veni ...
. It is particularly noteworthy for having been the residence of
Austen Henry Layard, discoverer of
Nineveh.
Description
Located on the confluence of three canals, it is thus an unusual structure in that it presents three facades rather than the customary one.
* Façade on the Grand Canal. It is the widest of the facades, it is characterized by a sober aspect and a large number of lancet windows. The first piano nobile is enriched by a large rectangular three-mullioned window that opens onto a terrace next to Palazzo Grimani Marcello
* Façade on the Rio delle Erbe. The least impressive of the facades
* Façade on the Rio di San Polo. It is enriched by two balconied three-mullioned windows, with elaborate capitels, flanked by an elegant couple of lancet windows. Nineteenth-century stone-carved patera of romanesque taste enrich the façade.
Origins and lost fresco cycle by Veronese and Zelotti
Ca' Cappello is a grand palace of Gothic origin, but substantially restructured during the course of the sixteenth century under the direction of its owner, the
procurator of Saint Mark Antonio Cappello
Antonio Cappello (1494-1565) was a Venetian noble, a member of the San Polo branch of the ':it:Cappello (famiglia)''">:it:Cappello_(famiglia).html" ;"title="':it:Cappello (famiglia)">':it:Cappello (famiglia)'' A Procurator of St Mark's, he act ...
, who had supervised some of the most important projects of construction and renovation in sixteenth-century Venice, in particular the commencement of work on
Rialto bridge
The Rialto Bridge ( it, Ponte di Rialto; vec, Ponte de Rialto) is the oldest of the four bridges spanning the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. Connecting the ' (districts) of San Marco and San Polo, it has been rebuilt several times since its fi ...
, the edification of the
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana
The Marciana Library or Library of Saint Mark ( it, italic=no, Biblioteca Marciana, but in historical documents commonly referred to as ) is a public library in Venice, Italy. It is one of the earliest surviving public libraries and repositori ...
and the supervision of the construction of the Golden staircase at
Ducal Palace or the redecoration of the room of the
Council of Ten
The Council of Ten ( it, Consiglio dei Dieci; vec, Consejo de i Diexe), or simply the Ten, was from 1310 to 1797 one of the major governing bodies of the Republic of Venice. Elections took place annually and the Council of Ten had the power to i ...
within the palace.
For these important works Antonio had frequently commissioned painters
Paolo Veronese and
Giovanni Battista Zelotti
Giovanni Battista Zelotti (; 1526 – 28 August 1578) was an Italian painter of the late Renaissance, active in Venice and her mainland territories.
He appears to have been born in Verona, then part of the Venetian mainland, and trained wit ...
, to who he had ties through common friend Michele Sanmicheli. Veronese and Zelotti were thus commissioned to decorate with frescoes the renovated Renaissance palace. The fresco cycle was noted by Giorgio Vasari as one of Veronese’s notable works “who painted with the same
elottithe façade of the palace of M. Antonio Cappello that is in Venice overlooking the Grand Canal”. The frescoes were more extensively described by erudite
Carlo Ridolfi
Carlo Ridolfi (1594–1658) was an Italian art biographer and painter of the Baroque period.
Biography
Ridolfi was born in Lonigo near Vicenza.
He was a pupil of the painter Antonio Vassilacchi (Aliense). He painted a ''Visitation'' for the ...
in his 1648 ''Le Meraviglie dell’arte'', “over the Grand Canal in the house of the Cappelli Veronese coloured some figures of Cerere, Pomona, Pallas and other deities. The figures above were painted by his friend Zelotti”. The cycle did not survive long. In his 1674 ''Miniere della Pittura Veneziana'' the erudite
Marco Boschini
Marco Boschini (1602–1681) was an Italian painter and engraver of the early Baroque period in Venice.
He was born in Venice, and was educated in the school of Palma il Giovane. He painted ''The Last Supper'' for the sacristy of at Venice. He ...
noted surviving but damaged work by Zelotti, and wrote that much had already been lost in a fire. The deities painted by Zelotti were however still visible in 1760 when
Anton Maria Zanetti printed his ''Varie Pitture a Fresco de principali maestri Veneziani'', and reproduced in engravings the four surviving figures. It is not certain when these remaining and worn out frescoes were finally lost, but by the nineteenth century they were certainly no longer visible.
Ca Cappello and the salon of the Layards
![Gentile Bellini 003](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Gentile_Bellini_003.jpg)
Ca Cappello was purchased, at a date given variously as 1874 and 1878 by sources, by the English archeologist, diplomat and politician Austen Henry Layard, with the help of the doyen of the British community in Venice, the historian
Rawdon Brown
Rawdon Lubbock Brown (25 Jan 1806 in London – 25 August 1883 in Venice) was a British antiquarian.
Life
He was born in London, the second child of Hugh William Brown and Anna Eliza Lubbock. He was baptised on 20 Feb 1806 at St James Church in W ...
. Layard, who had shipped his great collection of Italian Renaissance paintings to Venice in 1875, inhabited the palazzo stably following his withdrawal from the diplomatic career after political debacle in Istanbul and deep disagreement with
Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British statesman and Liberal politician. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four non-conse ...
until his death by cancer, on the occasion of a rare visit to London, in 1894. The frescoes by Zelotti and Veronese were no longer visible, but Layard managed significant renovation works in the palace. Red, yellow and green felt covered the walls inside, and Spanish silks festooned outside of balconies and windows gave the palazzo an unmistakable appearance.
Assyrian relief
Assyrian sculpture is the sculpture of the ancient Assyrian states, especially the Neo-Assyrian Empire of 911 to 612 BC, which was centered around the city of Assur in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) which at its height, ruled over all of Mesopotam ...
s from Nineveh and a Hellenistic funerary piece from
Samos
Samos (, also ; el, Σάμος ) is a Greece, Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the -wide Mycale Strait. It is also a se ...
were installed into the staircase wall, though these were in 1892 donated to the
Museo Civico Correr, and replaced with floral paintings by Neapolitan artist
Francesco Lavagna
Francesco, the Italian (and original) version of the personal name " Francis", is the most common given name among males in Italy. Notable persons with that name include:
People with the given name Francesco
* Francesco I (disambiguation), sev ...
.
More significant was the collection of paintings assembled by the Layards in a gallery in the palazzo, with the most significant work being the ''
Portrait of Mehmet II
''The Portrait of Mehmet II'' is a painting by the Venetian artist Gentile Bellini, depicting the Ottoman sultan, Mehmet the Conqueror, now in the National Gallery, London. It was painted in 1480 while Bellini was in Constantinople on a diplom ...
'' by
Gentile Bellini
Gentile Bellini (c. 1429 – 23 February 1507) was an Italian painter of the school of Venice. He came from Venice's leading family of painters, and at least in the early part of his career was more highly regarded than his younger brother Giovan ...
.
Because of Layard’s particular standing, the palazzo quickly became a meeting place for “the greatest representatives of British and international cultural, political and diplomatic intelligentsia between the final quarter of the 19th century and the first decade of the XXth”. The Layards quickly rose amongst a thriving expat community in Venice, their patronage ensuring the edification of
St. George’s Anglican church in Venice, where glass windows commemorate the founder. The death of Austen Henry Layard did not interrupt social activity, and his widow, Lady Enid, maintained an equally intense social activity in the palazzo. The intense social activity around the salon of Austen Henry Layard and his wife Enid is recorded in Lady Layard’s diary. Frequent visitors included art historians
John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and pol ...
and
Giovanni Morelli
Giovanni Morelli (25 February 1816 – 28 February 1891) was an Italian art critic and political figure. As an art historian, he developed the "Morellian" technique of scholarship, identifying the characteristic "hands" of painters through s ...
, the Victorian poet
Robert Browning, of whose poetic abilities Lady Layard had a low opinion, and the historian
Horatio Brown
Horatio Robert Forbes Brown (16 February 1854 – 19 August 1926) was a Scottish historian who specialized in the history of Venice and Italy.
Born in Nice, he grew up in Midlothian, Scotland, was educated in England at Clifton College and Oxfor ...
, as well as local nobles such as countess
Annina Morosini, supposedly the most beautiful woman in Venice at the time, but whom Lady Layard found “vulgar”.
Royalty acknowledged the Layards, and Lady Enid in particular enjoyed a special relationship with
queen Alexandra
Alexandra of Denmark (Alexandra Caroline Marie Charlotte Louise Julia; 1 December 1844 – 20 November 1925) was List of British royal consorts, Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, from 22 January 1901 t ...
and the German empress consort
Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada
* Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory
* Victoria, Seychelle ...
. Writing about Lady Layard in 1898 her friend
Lady Gregory
Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (''née'' Persse; 15 March 1852 – 22 May 1932) was an Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, ...
remembered that “the emperor
he Kaiser, son of empress Victoriapassed this house
a Cappellorecognized Lady Layard on the balcony and touched his hat two or three times”. In 1911 the
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany
, house = Hohenzollern
, father = Frederick III, German Emperor
, mother = Victoria, Princess Royal
, religion = Lutheranism (Prussian United)
, signature = Wilhelm II, German Emperor Signature-.svg
Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor ...
and
Lord Kitchener even held private meetings in Ca Cappello.
Later History and controversial swap
The death of Lady Layard in 1912 and the outbreak of the war saw an end to Ca Cappello’s role as a leading literary and social salon in Venice. It was later acquired by the Carnelutti family, before passing in 1967 into the possession of the
University of Venice Ca’ Foscari.
It is currently the object of a controversial swap operation that would see it transferred, together with sixteenth-century palace
Ca Bembo and the modern Palazzo Cosulich, two other university properties, to a property investment fund in exchange for a 1957 former state electricity company edifice. The swap has aroused considerable criticism and investigative weekly
L'Espresso
''L'Espresso'' () is an Italian weekly news magazine. It is one of the two most prominent Italian weeklies; the other is '' Panorama''. Since 2022 it has been published by BFC Media.
History and profile
One of Italy's foremost newsmagazines, ' ...
has noted the absence of a public auction and problems connected with an apparent violation - only supposed - with Italian heritage law, that forbids the swap of listed property. The chancellor
Carlo Carraro
Carlo Carraro (born May 17, 1957, in Italy) is the chancellor of the University of Venice for the three-year period 2009–2012, with a two-year extension of his mandate in accordance to the Gelmini University Law bringing it up to summer 2014. He ...
has defended the operation on budget grounds, arguing it will help stave off large cuts to scholarships and research funding.
["Tagli ai servizi se non vendiamo i palazzi" Gazzettino di Venezia, 3 Dicembre 2013]
References
{{Coord, 45.4362, 12.3301, type:landmark_region:IT, display=title
Cappello Layard