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The Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice is an Italian state museum.
They are located in the Dorsoduro district at the foot of the
Accademia bridge, in what until the beginning of the 19th century
was the vast complex formed by the church of Santa Maria della
Carità, the convent of the Lateran Canons and the Scuola Grande di
Santa Maria della Charity (the entrance is through the portal of the
latter). They take their name from the Academy of Fine Arts, which
opened them in 1817 and shared their headquarters until 2004.
They bring together the best collection of Venetian and Veneto
art, especially linked to paintings from the period from the 14th to
the 18th century: the major artists represented include Tintoretto,
Giambattista Pittoni, Titian, Canaletto, Giorgione, Giovanni
Bellini, Vittore Carpaccio, Cima da Conegliano and Veronese. There
are also other forms of art such as sculptures and drawings,
including the famous Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci (exhibited
only on special occasions).
They are owned by the Ministry of
Cultural Heritage and Activities, which since 2014 has counted them
among the museums with special autonomy.
Since its foundation (1750) the Academy has acquired works of art for
educational and restoration purposes. With the fall of the Serenissima
(1797) and the Treaty of Pressburg (December 1805), Venice entered the
French orbit and became one of the provinces of the Italian Kingdom
created by Napoleon. It was in this period that numerous decrees led to
the closure of all public buildings, the suppression of monasteries and
convents, the suppression of about 40 parishes and about 200 buildings
of worship, as well as the demolition of many others. The art objects
that did not get dispersed (many ended up in the main museum of the
kingdom after the Louvre, Brera), were collected at the Academy, with
essentially didactic purposes for art students.
The original
headquarters of the collection was the Fonteghetto della Farina, but
later the availability of buildings passed to the authorities after the
suppressions made them opt, in 1807, for the convent of the Lateran
Canons, the church and the Scuola della Carità. The arrangement of such
a varied complex of buildings was greeted with perplexity by academics,
above all due to the enormous expenses that the transfer and adaptation
would have involved, but the government decision did not change. Thus
profound works were started by commissioning the professor Giannantonio
Selva and the pupil Francesco Lazzari: the church was divided into
rooms, both horizontally and vertically, eliminating all the altars and
furnishings; the lower floor was divided into five large rooms intended
for the school, while two large halls lit by skylights and reserved for
the display of works of art were created on the upper floor; instead the
original Gothic windows of the church were walled up. Furthermore, the
convent lost part of the Palladian layout to allow for the construction
of new wings (1834), the façade was rebuilt by Lazzari (1830) and the
atrium of the Scuola was modified.
The first nucleus of the
collection also included the students' essays and a collection of
plaster casts (hence the name in the plural "Galleries"), and was
successfully exhibited in 1817. The collection was enriched with
paintings brought back from defeated France and above all with bequests
of great collectors. Further acquisitions took place when the Gallerie
passed to the state (1879) and continued afterwards. The division
between the art school and the museum was started in 1870 and completed
only in 1882. A first reorganization of the art gallery, with the
elimination of the nineteenth-century paintings, took place in 1895
under the direction of Giulio Cantalamessa: the meager examples of
non-Venetian schools were collected and the rest of the paintings
arranged chronologically; the large cycles of teleri were brought
together in the two halls of the church of Carità (Stories of St. Ursula
by Carpaccio and the Miracles of the relic of the true cross by various
artists); Titian's Presentation of Mary in the Temple was finally placed
in the Sala dell'Albergo della Scuola, so that it would return to the
original context for which it was designed.
During the First
World War the most important paintings were taken refuge in Florence,
returning to the early twenties and highlighting the need for a
reorganisation. In 1923 it was decided to partially recover the apsidal
hall of the church, eliminating the rooms intended for the
fifteenth-century teleri, restoring the trussed ceiling and the Gothic
windows; the Stories of Saint Ursula were moved to the room that still
preserves them today, while only the cycle of Miracles remained. In the
same period, the Assumption left the museum to return to the high altar
of the Frari. The remaining nineteenth-century works were given to the
Ca' Pesaro, while many works from foreign schools were moved to the
Galleria Franchetti at the Ca' d'Oro.
During the last conflict
the Venetian masterpieces were protected in various decentralized
deposits, including the fortress of Sassocorvaro. In 1944-1949 further
modernization works were carried out according to the most recent
museographic principles, arranging, under the direction of Vittorio
Moschini, a restructuring and addition of a new building connected to
the nineteenth-century rooms, works which Carlo Scarpa took care of.
Only in 1960 this intervention could be said to be definitively
concluded, with a thinning out of the works, the elimination of
historical falsehoods and greater attention to the materials used.
Under the direction of Francesco Valcanover, between 1961 and 1967,
the systems and services were updated. Furthermore, the graphic
collection was rearranged on the top floor, in specially air-conditioned
rooms. More recently, a new warehouse has been opened on the top floor
of Palladio's building, and a general overhaul of the fittings has been
undertaken. In the period 2001 - 2003 the rooms of the Gallery were at
the center of a lighting project and expansion of the exhibition areas.
Some of these interventions were also carried out thanks to funds from
the Lotto game, on the basis of the provisions of law 662/96.
Complex of Santa Maria della Carità
Church and convent
Built in
the 12th century, the church and convent housed a Battuti School
starting from the following century to receive financial support. In the
fifteenth century the revenues increased thanks to the support of the
Venetian Pope Eugene IV, allowing the buildings to be renovated and
further expanded.
The complex also flourished in the following
century, so much so that Andrea Palladio was entrusted with a very
ambitious project for the convent, which was never completed. The fire
of 1630 instead marks the decline on the way, culminating in 1744 in the
collapse of the bell tower.
In 1768 the order of Lateran Canons
was suppressed and the church was closed in 1806.
Great School of
Santa Maria della Carità
The Scuola della Carità, founded in 1260,
was one of the first Scuole Grandi (that is, Scuole dei Battuti). Housed
first in the church of San Leonardo, then on the Giudecca, already in
1261 it had obtained spaces in this convent. Like the other schools, it
had tasks of mutual aid and charity towards the poor, which it also
cultivated through prudent investments of the sums paid by the confreres
and by the Republic.
Thanks to its wealth, the confraternity was
able to help the Canons on several occasions by purchasing properties,
such as the land on which, starting from 1344, it built its permanent
headquarters. However, the entrance remained in common with the convent,
and it was the door still present to the left of the current entrance
and decorated with Gothic aedicules with the patron saints of the
school. Internally it was enriched with a coffered ceiling in the
chapter house (15th century, preserved) and numerous paintings. Among
the most important are two works exhibited in the original location (ex
Sala dell'Albergo della Scuola): the Presentation of Mary in the Temple
by Titian (1538) and the Triptych of the Madonna della Carità by Antonio
Vivarini and Giovanni d'Alemagna (1480); the other two works in the
series, the Marriage of the Virgin by Giampietro Silvio and the
Annunciation by Girolamo Dente, are instead found today in the parish
church of Mason Vicentino.
Around 1760 Bernardino Maccaruzzi and
Giorgio Massari made changes both internally and externally, with the
complete replacement of the previous Gothic facade and the opening of
the portal on the field (the facade will acquire its current appearance
in 1830). Although still prosperous, the School was also suppressed in
1806.
The collection today can be divided into: works that have always been
in Santa Maria della Carità and its School, works collected during the
suppression, a small number of works by the academics transferred here
from the old headquarters, works purchased specifically (such as the
collection of plaster casts of the 'abbot Farsetti, 1805) and, finally,
works arrived through legacies. Among the oldest legacies we recall the
Annunciation by Giambattista Pittoni of 1757, exhibited since he became
President of the Academy, as per tradition in the Sala delle Adunanze of
the Academy, headquarters of the Academy of Venice, and today exhibited
in the Painting Room of the 'ala Paladia with Tintoretto, those of
Girolamo Molin (1816), which yielded various works of Venetian
primitives, that of Felicita Reiner (1833, formalized only in 1850),
which yielded works by Piero della Francesca (San Girolamo and the donor
Girolamo Amadi ) and Giovanni Bellini (Madonna and Child between Saints
Catherine and Mary Magdalene), and that of Girolamo Contarini (1838),
which included 180 works including the Madonna degli Alberetti and the
Four allegories also by Bellini, as well as six paintings by Pietro
Longhi . The graphic collection was formed in 1822 with the purchase of
Giuseppe Bossi's collection comprising more than three thousand pieces,
including the famous Vitruvian Man and examples of the Lombard,
Ligurian, Bolognese, Tuscan, Roman, French, German and Flemish schools.
In the 19th century the prevailing orientation of the collections
towards Venetian painting was considered limiting and an attempt was
made to fill the lack of works from other schools through a series of
exchanges with similar institutions. In reality, when the didactic
purpose declined, this diversity was finally seen as a peculiarity to be
valued and strengthened.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Francesco
Giuseppe bought works such as Mantegna's San Giorgio, Hans Memling's
Portrait of a Young Man and Giorgione's Old Woman for the gallery. Under
the direction of Cantalamessa entered the Madonna and Child by Cosmè
Tura, the Sacred conversation by Palma il Vecchio and two early works by
Giambattista Tiepolo. The direction of Gino Fogolari (since 1905)
ensured the museum other fundamental masterpieces, such as the Tempesta
by Giorgione and works by Luca Giordano and Bernardo Strozzi. After the
pause of the world conflicts, the acquisition of new works resumed: in
1949 Guido Cagnola donated a sketch book by Canaletto, while in the
seventies works by Francesco Guardi and Alessandro Longhi arrived. In
the early eighties Valcanover claimed about thirty works recovered by
Rodolfo Siviero in Germany and other countries, which were still in the
deposits of Palazzo Pitti in Florence: however he managed to obtain only
eight paintings, including works by Giovanni Antonio Guardi , Canaletto
and Sebastiano Ricci.
In January 2018, on the occasion of the
bicentenary of the first public opening of the Galleries, the Mibact in
collaboration with Venetian Heritage and the Venice in Peril Fund of
London presented the new acquisitions that will enrich the museum's
artistic heritage: the canvas depicting The Speranza by Giorgio Vasari,
the fragment of the Parable of the Wedding Banquet by Bernardo Strozzi,
the Self-Portrait as an Allegory of Amazement by Pietro Bellotti and 18
preparatory drawings by Francesco Hayez for the painting The Destruction
of the Temple in Jerusalem.
Vasari, who arrived in Venice around
1541, obtained the commission for some paintings intended for the
ceiling of a room in Palazzo Corner. Subsequently, however, at the end
of the eighteenth century, the ceiling was dismantled and the respective
compartments dispersed on the international market. Only in 1987, thanks
to the help of the Venetian superintendencies, the State managed to
repurchase all the fragments, among which La Speranza represents the
recovery of one of the last before the complex can be reassembled in its
entirety and returned again to the city of Venice.
Following
Strozzi's canvas, a fragment of a larger oval composition representing
the Parable of the wedding banquet, a work originally kept in the church
of the Ospedale degli incurabili.
Also in 2017 dates back to the
purchase of the Self-Portrait of Pietro Belotti, one of the most
singular and evocative works of the Venetian painter's artistic
production, where the artist's attempt to recover the sixteenth-century
Venetian tradition remains clear.
Finally, the preparatory
sketches by Francesco Hayez, the undisputed protagonist of Italian
Romanticism, was certainly one of the greatest European painters of the
19th century.