Palazzo Corner Mocenigo is a Renaissance palace in Venice, located in the San Polo district, in Campo San Polo, towards which the right and rear side facades look. It is the headquarters of the Regional Command of the Guardia di Finanza.
The palace was built in the sixteenth century on the remains of a
fourteenth-century "stazio" house, destroyed by fire in 1535.
The
residence, still recognizable in Jacopo de' Barbari's View of 1500,
after being acquired as public property in 1349, was repeatedly donated
to eminent personalities to reward them for services rendered to the
Republic of Venice. As such it had already belonged to Giacomo da
Carrara, Jacopo dal Verme, Erasmo da Narni and to Francesco Sforza who
in 1461 gave it to Marco Corner in exchange for a palace on the Grand
Canal in San Samuele, then still under construction.
Having taken
possession of the building, Marco Corner launched a purchase campaign
which in 1480 led him to take over from Marco Dandolo a series of
neighboring buildings (described in the documents as warehouses and a
"stazio" house), located on the southern side of the current calle
Vincenzo Coronelli. In 1489, with the death of the patrician, the
properties of San Polo passed, following the hereditary axis, to his son
Giorgio and subsequently, in 1527, to Giovanni Corner.
It was
Giovanni who, after the fire of 1535, entrusted the reconstruction of
the building to Michele Sanmicheli. The construction site only opened in
1551, a year before the client's death and the works continued beyond
the death of the Veronese architect, reaching completion only in 1564.
In fact, in May of that year, the sons of Giovanni, Marcantonio and
Francesco Corner, appeared to occupy the first noble floor of the now
completed building.
The palace was reduced to the exclusive use
of the family only starting from 1596, becoming to all intents and
purposes the residence of the Corners of the branch known as "San Polo
in Campo".
The building underwent numerous transformations
between the 17th and 18th centuries; if at first they contemplated the
further expansion of the building through the purchase or construction
of annexed factories, in a second they concentrated more on the
redefinition of the internal spaces and their decorative apparatuses, so
as to make them responsive to the changed housing needs and to various
uses. Among these, the extensive renovation campaign which, between 1736
and 1747, mainly involved the mezzanine rooms on the first noble floor
and the rooms on the second floor, remains well documented.
From
the branch of Giorgio Corner (brother of the famous Caterina Cornaro,
Queen of Cyprus and Armenia from 1474 to 1489) descended Laura (the last
representative of that branch) who in 1796 married Alvise Mocenigo,
bringing the palace as a dowry, which then took the name of Ca ' Corner
Mocenigo. The building passed through various owners and housed, among
others, the Venetian School of Art applied to Industry, the Imperial
Royal Austrian Customs and a temporary headquarters of the Gazzettino
(founded in 1887 in Venice), came to be, after the state acquisition
(1953), today's headquarters of the Guardia di Finanza.
The
building was already known for the extraordinary richness of the
decorations and the priceless art collections (which ranged from
Antonello da Messina to Giovanni Bellini, from Andrea Mantegna to Pietro
da Cortona), when in the eighteenth century, following some building
interventions, it was undertook a further decoration program on the
second noble floor which directly involved Giambattista Tiepolo
alongside Mengozzi Colonna, the sculptor Antonio Gai and the plasterer
from Ticino Andrea Solari. Almost all the works of art are lost as a
result of the 19th century looting. Only a few quadratures frescoed by
Colonna and, luckily, a Cupid regent with bunches of roses by Tiepolo
remain in place, placed to decorate the ceiling of a small quadrangular
room, which connects the cabinet of mirrors with the "green room"
overlooking the Rio di San Polo. Some of Tiepolo's works, such as the
four canvases with the characters from Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata, the
gilded monochrome medallions of the cardinal virtues and the ceiling
canvas Wedding allegory of the Corner family for the "new" dressing
room, are the first to be found in the National Gallery of London, two
of the medallions are in the Rijksmuseum and one in the Metropolitan
Museum (trace of the fourth has been lost), while the ceiling is now
kept in the National Gallery of Australia. Some frescoes by Tiepolo, the
Apotheosis of Hercules and Justice and Peace, were torn out and put back
on canvas in 1893 and are now in the Jaquemart-André.
Palazzo Corner Mocenigo, insisting on an irregular lot of about 48 x
20.5 meters and with a height at the eaves line of about 24 meters, is
one of the largest palaces in Venice.
The building is
characterized by a showy vertical development, very evident in the water
facade in which the relationship between the base and the height appears
all the more unusual due to the narrowness of the facing space. The
building rises, taking up the tripartite planimetric scheme of the
Venetian palace, on six floors. In fact, the three main ones (pé pian,
first and second soler) correspond to the same number of mezzanines,
hidden in the two main floors. In addition to the six floors, an attic
was created in the large attic, already present at the beginning of the
eighteenth century (as can be seen in an engraving by Luca Carlevarijs
from 1703) and in any case of little importance.
The facade on
the San Polo stream, in Renaissance style, is well rhythmic and dry in
the decorative component. The compositional score is made evident by the
use of Istria stone to detach from the underlying surfaces in exposed
brick, the ashlar of the base, the structural ribs and the decisive
succession of angular ashlars, so as to bring out, according to the
principle serliano, the structural frame of the building. Starting from
the rusticated basement band in Istrian stone and punctuated by the
three water accesses, it shows the superimposed orders according to the
classical canons. The marked entablatures above the windows which are
repeated in the middle of the two large central serlianes act as a
counterpoint to the design of the low pilasters. The balustrades of the
balconies are not particularly protruding, as had become fashionable at
the time. The prospectus closes with a sturdy pediment resting on a
large stringcourse frame.
On the sides, only the portion facing
Campo San Polo appears more ornate, which constitutes the access from
the ground. The side façade has a double round arched entrance, which
from the 18th century replaced the original single portal, still visible
in a view by Antonio Visentini included in the Urbis Venetiarum
prospectus celebraores ex Antonii Canal tabulis of 1742. In
correspondence with the openings gemine of the ground floor, at the
level of the main floors, there are two overlapping three-mullioned
windows, also with a round arch, the first of which has a projecting
balcony, while the second is marked at the base by a fine balustrade.
The elevation on the right side is closed by the alternating ashlars
placed on the corner. The only partial coincidence of the architectural
language with the water facade casts doubt on Sanmicheli's authorship
and leaves open the hypothesis of a design extraneous to his hand.
The palace was admired but very little imitated (except in the
particular solutions) perhaps due to its ostentatious robustness not
very suited to the lagoon environment, so much so that for these reasons
Antonio Diedo in his Fabbriche di Venezia preferred to compare it to the
Palazzo Farnese in Rome and to that of Caprarola.