Palazzo Loredan dell'Ambasciatore is a palace in Venice, located in the Dorsoduro district and overlooking the Grand Canal, between Palazzo Moro and Casa Mainella.
The Loredans, to whom the palace belonged, were one of the most
illustrious families of the so-called "new houses" which reached dogal
dignity in 1501 with Leonardo Loredan and a second time with Francesco
in 1572.
Noble residence of the Loredan family, the palace dates
back to the second half of the fifteenth century. The name
"dell'Ambasciatore" is due to the fact that, during the dogato of
Francesco Loredan, the structure was made available to the Austrian
embassy for 29 years, on condition that the ambassador paid the rent in
advance and restored the building at his expense. The proposal was
accepted and in 1754 the ambassador Filippo di Rosenberg Orsini took
office in the residence. Beginning in 1764, it was Count Giacomo
Durazzo, imperial ambassador in Venice (1764 - 1784), belonging to a
historic Genoese family, who settled in the palace with his wife
Ernestine Aloisia Ungnad von Weissenwolff, an Austrian noble. The
portrait of the couple, by Martin van Meytens, is now kept in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
In 1891 the building was
largely destroyed by fire, but was promptly restored. It is currently
the private residence of the Gaggia family.
The Gothic-style building was probably erected around 1470 and
develops on three floors in the front, while behind it rises one, from a
later period.
What characterizes this building or rather the
facade (rather than its very close to square size) is the great
architectural rigor. There are two noble floors with superimposed
polyfores. The mid-fifteenth century has passed, even if the
architectural operation is still clearly Gothic, we are moving towards a
new era and the general idea that characterizes the whole is no longer
what it used to be.
The ground floor has a beautiful ogival
portal and two levels of small single-lancet windows.
The first noble
floor shows itself with an elegant loggia, composed of a quadrifora with
a pointed arch delimited, delimited by balustrades and small columns
with above, inside the marble frame, some holes, on the model of Palazzo
Ducale and the Ca' d'Oro ; noble has the same single lancet windows, but
centrally repeats only the quadrifora, without the decorations.
laterally two ogival single lancet windows on each side, with two
figurative bas-reliefs in the center with the Loredan coat of arms
depicted.
The second floor
Characteristic is the solution of
the two niches with page shield holder placed in the free spaces of the
wall which together with the two single lancet windows form the side
rooms; on these architectural and sculptural motifs of new solution
Arslan highlights the intervention of Renaissance artists".