Palazzo Grimani is an imposing Renaissance palace in Venice overlooking the Grand Canal in the San Marco district, not far from the Rialto bridge.
The client, the noble Girolamo Grimani, announced his intention to
build the palace in the summer of 1557 after he had taken over the site
occupied by a ruined palace in March 1556 by the brothers Bertuccio and
Marino Contarini.
In 1559, the ground floor was completed just
before Sanmicheli's death.
After the death of the architect the
situation became chaotic. In fact, the client first summoned various
architects, then he himself set about directing the construction site,
until in 1561 he entrusted the direction of the works to Giangiacomo de'
Grigi.
The task entrusted to de' Grigi was to complete the lower
floor, for which two victories were made to be inserted in the spandrels
of the central arch of the facade by the sculptor Alessandro Vittoria,
but also a complete revision of the initial project by Sanmicheli with a
lowering of the internal height of the ceiling of the first and second
floors.
In 1562, for 3,000 ducats, a second contract was
stipulated between de' Grigi and Grimani for the creation of a mezzanine
for the top floor as well as a revision of the first and second floors.
In November 1566 a dispute arose between the client and the
architect for works that had been carried out without being foreseen and
works that had not been carried out despite being foreseen, in
particular the debate was on the execution of the facade and on the sum
of money that Grimani still had to pay de' Grigi. The dispute was
resolved thanks to the intervention of three illustrious architects
Palladio, Sansovino and Pietro Guberni who established what was still to
be done, the cost and the date by which to deliver the work, which was
set at 1 January 1568.
However, yet another contract was signed
by Grimani and de' Grigi in October 1567. In 1570 Grimani, with an
official declaration, regretted the huge amount of money spent on the
construction of the palace, which had been going on for 12 years and
still had to be terminated.
When de' Grigi died in 1572, the
palace was still to be finished.
In 1575, the two sons of
Girolamo Grimani, Marino and Almorò, after inheriting their father's
fortune, had a list drawn up of the works still not carried out and
their cost, according to what Giovan Antonio Rusconi and other
architects reported.
The completion of the building was carried
out only between the end of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The palace was the home of the Grimani family until the fall of the
Republic of Venice and subsequently the family intended to demolish it.
It was the Austrian government that preserved its value from the date of
its purchase, which took place in 1805. The building was readapted and
the post office was located inside it. From 1818 the building became
state property and later became the seat of the court of appeal, an
active role to this day.
Between 1972 and 1974 the building was
restored with a particular eye and the suggestive patina left over time
on the facade.
The plan of the current building rises above that of the pre-existing
building, which was adapted to the structure of the land, which forms an
oblique angle with the Rio di San Luca.
Currently the building is
divided into two parts, one front and one rear, the first part is
shallow, while the second is more so, and they meet to form an
"L"-shaped layout. The structure of the current building takes up that
of the pre-existing building with the difference that the front part was
significantly lower than the rear main structure.
With the
reconstruction work, the total height of the entire building was
increased considerably, a mezzanine was added to each of the three main
floors and a vault was built to cover the entrance hall.
The
layout of the upper floors follows a similar layout. Both on the noble
floor and on the top floor, the hall extends up to the facade and is
shifted to the left and therefore does not correspond to the centre.
However, this asymmetry does not appear externally because the
intelligent design of the façade includes rows of openings of equal size
on both the main floors and the mezzanines which fit into the elaborate
architectural texture. In reality, the organization of Palazzo Grimani
is practically identical to that used by Sanmicheli for the almost
contemporary Palazzo Onori in Verona, which has a facade with five bays
with the hall in an identical position and which is also illuminated
from the front by a combination of two windows on the main floor and two
on the mezzanine.
The colossal stone-clad facade of Palazzo
Grimani is arranged in five alternating bays, ranging from wide to
narrow, with the end bays of all three floors framed in a paired order
that differentiates it from the three central and paired main order in
all five spans to a minor order.
The ground floor is articulated
with fluted Corinthian pilasters coupled with a smaller order of
Corinthian pilasters. The central three bays correspond to the entrance
hall and contain a large arch in the middle flanked by a smaller arch on
either side, surmounted by a mezzanine opening in a recessed panel,
while the end bays have rectangular windows with and mezzanine opening
both positioned inside recessed panels.
The noble floor which
develops from a continuous balcony is characterized by a rather complete
order of fluted Corinthian semi-columns, paired with doors at the
corners and coupled with a minor order of Corinthian pilasters, while
the top floor has an even lower order of Corinthian semi-columns which
in this case are coupled to Ionic pilasters and support a large crowning
entablature.
On these two floors, the central bay and the two
terminal bays are characterized by arches that frame rectangular windows
both on the main level and on the mezzanine, which however are hidden by
recessed infill panels and wooden shutters, while the two narrower bays
have windows rectangular that appear visible at both levels.
«Of all the buildings in Venice, subsequent to the last additions of the Doge's Palace, the noblest is the Casa Grimani: This consists of three floors of the Corinthian order, and is at the same time simple, delicate, sublime and of such colossal proportions that the same buildings on its right and left, also with three floors, reach only its first string course.»