Hidden Venice
Venice Art and Architecture Course
- Date/time:
- 29 May - 26 June 2012
Tuesdays 10.45am - 12.45pm
- Venue:
- 1 Berkeley Street, London W1J 8DJ
- Lecturer:
- Graham Fawcett
- Fees:
- Full course (5 lectures) £175.00
Single lecture £40.00
(Includes morning coffee, biscuits and refreshments)
Book your place now on this Venice Art and Architecture Course
“Lectures are a very high standard and fascinating asides - very informative”
Seen from the air, Venice may seem compact enough to be explored high and low in a weekend. Besides, thanks to Canaletto’s clarity and the occasional signs to San Marco and Accademia, we think we can home in on all the treasures with a guide-book and a map.
So how do you account for the feeling that the “real” Venice is the one you see when you’re lost? Exactly. But how can you find it on purpose? With a tip-off or two, it’s easy to find because in this labyrinthine city the unknown is often one small bridge away from the famous. Hidden Venice takes the wraps off five of these quite well kept secrets, each of them easily missed and all of them guardians of art.
Course outline
A Stone’s Throw from Santa Lucia
The staircase at Palazzo Labia leads to a landing and a space like a stage-set you walk straight into. Then you see the Tiepolos, facing each other across you, like floor-to-ceiling blow-ups of scenes from a love affair: first, Cleopatra arrives by ship to be with Antony; second, the banquet at which she, bare-breasted, surveys him. And all of it 300 metres from Ferrovia.
A Many-Chaptered Novel of Room
Off, off The Grand Canal, the hideaway Palazzo Querini-Stampalia has 66 Gabriel Bella canvases of 18th century Venice: from a football match and a bull and wheelbarrow race to a courtesans’ boat promenade and sea-skating. There are masterpieces by both Palmas, Il Giovane stealing it with his Abraham and Isaac and Adam and Eve. The garden is a Xanadu of water-games by the major Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa.
Which Church Was It?
In a Venice walker’s limbo beyond the northern end of the Zattere is a church you may either never have discovered or struggle to find a second time. Miss Garnet’s Angel, a novel by Salley Vickers, published in 2000, features both the church and its unforgettably commanding set of 18th century paintings, by Gianantonio Guardi or his brother Francesco about the story of Tobias and Raffaele. That story comes very much to life as you pass from one painting to the next at the Chiesa dell’Angelo Raffaele.
Upstaged by the Church Next Door
In the unintentionally well-kept secret of the Scuola Grande Dei Carmini, the splendid barrel-vaulted staircase leads to an attractive upper world of dark wood panelling. The sala capitolare is lit by the sky of the big central Tiepolo - The Virgin in Glory gives the Scapular to Saint Simon Stock - and by eight satellite paintings, among them the astonishingly modern one of an Angel catching hold of a young mason as he falls from scaffolding.
Round and round but not straight out again
There is something about the lure of the Salute: once inside, you want to plough a slow furrow round its geometric shape, stopping at every chapel and painting and then hitting the fresh air when the door comes round again. That is how to miss the sign to the Great Sacristy, a short corridor leading to a wonderfully startling treasury of Titians and Tintorettos.
