The Querini Stampalia Foundation is a cultural foundation in Venice
based in Palazzo Querini Stampalia. It was born in 1869 by the will of
N.H. Giovanni Querini Stampalia, who, having died without direct heirs,
decides to leave all his assets for the creation of an institution to
which he entrusts the task of "promoting the cult of good studies and
useful disciplines".
This is still the mission of the Foundation
today, which preserves the heritage of the noble Venetian family and
which offers the public a library, a museum and areas where temporary
exhibitions are held, with particular attention to contemporary art.
The ground floor of the sixteenth-century building underwent
restoration by the architect Carlo Scarpa between 1961 and 1963.
Subsequent interventions by the architects Valeriano Pastor and Mario
Botta gave the interior its current appearance.
Throughout its
history there have been various personalities from the world of art and
culture who have guided its administration. The last president was
Marino Cortese (2004-2020).
Located on the first floor of Palazzo Querini Stampalia, the Library
preserves a bibliographic heritage of about 350,000 volumes, which is
divided into historical collections, deriving from family collections,
and modern collections, established after the birth of the Foundation
and continuously growing.
In compliance with the will of the
founder, who wrote in his will "the Library will remain open [...] in
all those days and hours when the public libraries are closed, and in
the evening especially for the convenience of scholars", it is open even
in the evening and on most public holidays.
In the consultation
and reading rooms, organized on open shelves according to the Dewey
Decimal Classification, 32,000 volumes are available, while in the
newspaper library there are 300 magazines and 20 newspaper titles, both
domestic and foreign.
The distribution service is active for all
other materials stored in the warehouses. For the research of the works
owned, the library is equipped with a computerized catalog (OPAC of the
National Library Service) and paper catalogs with cards and volumes.
Spaces and services
total area: 1,650 m²
area intended for the
public: 950 m²
book deposits: 700 m²
reception services on the
ground floor: 385 m²
reading rooms: 16
reading places: 180
workstations for catalog consultation: 3
workstations for internet
browsing: 5
newspaper library
wifi browsing
photocopies
thematic showcases with reading and in-depth reading proposals
The family library
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, in
Venice, it is possible to note how many private libraries were assuming
a significant dimension in the city context. Usually, rulers, religious
congregations and patrician families took charge of it. Only in the
seventeenth century the book collections, as well as the artistic and
real estate heritage, were experienced as something capable of cementing
and preserving the family identity.
In this context, the Querini
family also had its own family library. In fact, although the
chronological data are not precise, it can be assumed that already in
the times of Polo Querini (1606-1663) the family book collection was
already formed and possessed documents of a certain importance. This
first nucleus was made up in particular of domestic memoirs and some
manuscripts that we will cite later. With the beginning of the
eighteenth century, however, the Querini library assumed a central role
in the internal dynamics of the family thanks to the initiative of some
members such as Andrea Querini, who through purchases and matrimonial
strategies considerably increased the book heritage. Furthermore, thanks
to the support of a first librarian, he drafted the first catalogs which
will be collected in 8 volumes (three for the catalog of Italian works,
three for the catalog of Greek-Latin works and two for the "catalogue
françois").
When the Republic of Venice fell, the Querini library
was one of the few not to disperse its patrimony, but rather to increase
it with the addition of documents relating to the economic and
patrimonial activities of the family, as well as to the particular
interests of the individual members.
The last descendant of the
lineage, Giovanni Querini, mainly dealt with the reorganization of the
family documents, leaving out the older works. With his death and the
consequent birth of the Foundation, Giovanni Querini appointed Gustavo
Adolfo Unger as future librarian, a literature and German language
teacher who would take care of the library until 1882.
Historical
fund
Before the fall of the Republic of Venice, Venetian patrician
families usually possessed a personal archive which was divided into
three original nuclei: private documents, i.e. letters, marriage
contracts, wills and other types; family documents, such as litigation
contracts; and political documents. The nature of this initial
conformation, purely administrative and personal, gradually changed
through the acquisitions of the family and above all through the
matrimonial strategies, which made the family archives "a complex family
archives".
This is also the case of the Querini archive, into
which part of the archives of the Tron, Contarini, Dolfin, Mocenigo,
Bragadin, Moro, Longo and Lippomano families converged, thanks to
hereditary and matrimonial ties.
In any case, with the will of
Giovanni Querini, dated 11 December 1868, the Querini archive-library
heritage included:
manuscripts: 1,300 copies, of which 1,150
pieces from the 14th to the 18th century that belonged to the family,
including the Capitulare nauticum (13th-16th century), the Promissio
contra maleficia (14th century), the Aesopian fables (14th century), Gli
Asolani by Pietro Bembo (15th-16th century), the tailor's book (16th
century) and various ducal commissions. To these, another 150 are added,
the result of successive acquisitions.
incunabula: 100 specimens,
including the Fasciculus medicae of Johannes de Ketham (1493) and the
Liber chronicarum of Hartmann Schedel (1493).
sixteenth century:
1,617 both Italian and foreign specimens, including 13 Aldines.
cartographic fund: it consists of 250 geographical maps, 97 cadastral
maps, 27 atlases, 7 pilot books and 6 nautical charts dated between the
15th and 19th centuries. The fund develops in relation to the practical
uses and interests of the family which saw among its members sea
captains and lovers of geographical science.
engravings: 3,000
copies.
archive: the family archive consists of 120 envelopes
containing documents, letters and drawings ranging from the 16th century
to the founding of the Foundation.
musical fund: includes both
manuscripts and printed works. Among the manuscripts there are
anthologies of opera arias from the end of the 17th century, while the
printed specimens, which mostly date back to the decades between the
1700s and 1800s and include printed works alongside the Venetian
editions in Paris and Vienna, include treatises on musical subjects and
over 450 opera librettos.
old printed collection: it includes over
20,000 editions from the 17th to the 19th century, mostly from the
family library which, especially in the 18th century in parallel with
the formation of the real estate and artistic heritage, grew and focused
on a broad range of interests as mentioned above
Although almost nothing is known about the work of the first
librarian, Gustavo Adolfo Unger, due to lack of reports and accounts, in
1877 there were 3,700 more books than the 1869 holdings and the presence
of 128 scientific and industrial journals. Furthermore, in the same
period of time, there were 1,835 admissions to the library.
In
1880 Leonardo Perosa was called to lead the library, who will keep the
mandate until his death in 1904. While facing a difficult economic
situation, which also forced him to temporarily interrupt the purchase
of periodicals and continuous works, he increased the starting book
heritage of about 10,000 volumes thanks to acquisitions and donations.
This growth was oriented above all towards materials and magazines, both
Italian and foreign, of a scientific and literary nature. The most
important task to which Leonardo Perosa dedicated himself was the
reorganization of part of the historical fund conserved by the library.
Indeed, he formed the catalog of manuscripts divided into 9 classes, the
alphabetical catalog of subjects, the catalog of incunabula and aldines,
and the reordering of envelopes and files in bound volumes.
In
1905 Arnaldo Segarizzi was commissioned by the Istituto Veneto, a body
chosen by Giovanni Querini to supervise the work of the Foundation (it
still carries out this task), to reorganize the library of the
Foundation, a task which he will fulfill until his death in 1924. During
his tenure, through acquisitions aimed particularly at the field of
applied sciences, he tried to create a library capable of attracting a
greater number of scholars, thanks to the broad spectrum of subjects
that the library could offer. In this sense the internal space was
rearranged. At first, after introducing the wooden and iron shelving, he
divided the library into two open-shelf consultation rooms: one for
consulting material belonging to the ancient collection and one for
consulting material from the modern collection. Subsequently, with the
increase in the number of admissions of readers and scholars (following
the decision to open the rooms also to high school students), Arnaldo
Segarizzi decided to open a third consultation room and to expand the
reading room . Finally, to facilitate consultation, he prepared a new
catalog to which he applied the most modern acquisitions of
librarianship, i.e. the adoption of international format cards and the
creation of one of the first examples in Italy of a subject catalogue.
Between November 15, 1917 and May 13, 1918, the library was closed
due to the outbreak of the Great War.
In 1926 Count Pietro Orsi,
as a full member of the Istituto Veneto, appointed Manlio Dazzi to
direct the Foundation, a role he would hold until the end of the war.
During the years of the fascist regime, in agreement with the
administration of the Foundation, he made courageous choices such as the
decision not to remove the entries of Jewish authors from the catalog
following the enactment of the racial laws. At the end of the conflict,
he oversaw the development of the collections favoring the humanities,
with particular attention to literature. Furthermore, he applied, as he
had already done to the Malatestiana Library of Cesena, some techniques
of modern librarianship such as the collection of statistical data
relating to bibliographic acquisitions and the classification of the
material acquired into 18 subject groups.
In the immediate
post-war period Piero Monico was appointed, on behalf of the Cln Veneto,
extraordinary commissioner of the Foundation which he then continued to
administer for 19 years, until 1964. In 2015, a hall of the Library will
be dedicated to him.
During the direction of Giuseppe Mazzariol,
until 1974, the role of the Library also grew as an organizer of
cultural events, which had profound effects on the growth of book
collections.
The current face of the Library was defined during
the direction of Giorgio Busetto, director from 1984 to 2004. In 1982,
an agreement with the Municipality of Venice recognized the Querini
Stampalia Library as a civic library. This new guise is linked to the
acquisition of material relating to Venetian history, books of
contemporary literature and works suitable for medium-level information
needs. At the end of the 1980s, the restructuring of the headquarters
and the modernization of the services continued with the rearrangement
of the open shelf and its entry into the collective catalog of the
National Library Service. From 2001, on the other hand, the newspaper
library was built and the computerization of the rooms was completed
with wi-fi coverage.
The modern collection currently includes over 250,000 titles,
including monographs and periodicals, taking the form of the collection
of a general library, whose materials cover all classes of knowledge,
with some specializations that mainly concern the artistic disciplines
and the history of the Veneto.
The modern collection also
includes special collections derived from bequests and donations,
including:
Buonafalce fund. In 2010, the scholar of classical
cryptology Augusto Buonafalce donated part of his library to the
Foundation: around 200 volumes entered the collections, making up a
specialized collection of medieval and Renaissance cryptology.
Camerino Fund. Following the fascist racial laws Aldo Camerino,
translator and literary critic of Jewish origin, former collaborator of
the Foundation, was forced by the consequent financial difficulties to
cede his library comprising 5,000 volumes of contemporary literature in
the original language, French, English and Italian, with some copies in
German and Russian. The fund was acquired by the Foundation to support
it.
Cattani Fund. At the beginning of the nineties of the last
century, Adriano Cattani from Padua donated his collection of volumes
and periodicals on postal history and philately. It consists of some
hundreds of monographs and about 50 journals, some of which are still in
use.
Lucion fund. In 1972 the Belgian Pierre Lucion, already a senior
official of the European Economic Community and a frequent visitor to
Venice, donated most of his library to the Foundation. The approximately
3,000 volumes, mainly in French, deal with literature, philosophy,
history, religion and geography.
Moretti Fund. In 2009 the brothers
Carlo and Giovanni Moretti, owners of the Murano glass company of the
same name, donated a specialist fund to the Foundation, consisting of
about 270 volumes dedicated to the history and art of glass.
Piedmont
Fund. The fund, received by the Foundation in 2003 through the bequest
of Giannina Piamonte, is made up of archival materials and about a
thousand volumes, including modern texts and ancient works, mainly on
Venetian history and culture, currently being catalogued.
Sarfatti
Fund. In 2003 Magali Sarfatti Larson and Roberto Sarfatti donated to the
Foundation about 300 volumes that belonged to their grandmother, the
writer and art critic Margherita Sarfatti. The fund documents her
artistic and literary interests and the relationships she maintained
with some prominent personalities of her time.
Stefani Fund. In 2002
the Foundation received from Mario Stefani's heirs the donation of a
fund containing bibliographic, artistic and documentary materials that
belonged to the Venetian poet. The book collection, made up of about
3,000 volumes, mainly includes editions of poetic and literary works
(often by local publishers) which offer an overview of the cultural
environment linked to his activity.
Trentin Baratto Fund. The
collection currently being catalogued, consisting of approximately 350
volumes of French literature, was donated in 2014 by the heirs of
Professor Franca Baratto Trentin.
Treves fund. The fund, made up of
over 6,000 texts of classical philology, together with various editions
of the Greek and Latin classics, was donated in 1994 by Janet Thompson,
wife of the Venetian professor Piero Treves. The collection represents
the main nucleus of his personal library, while a section dedicated to
the history of historiography was left to the Italian Institute for
Historical Studies in Naples.
Set up on the second floor of Palazzo Querini Stampalia, the Museum
owes its collections to the artistic collections formed over the course
of the history of the family, which were joined by acquisitions and
donations made after the birth of the Foundation.
It is proposed
to the public as a house museum in which a collection of paintings are
exhibited, ranging from the fourteenth to the twentieth century, mainly
of the Venetian school, eighteenth-century and neoclassical furnishings,
sculptures, Murano glass chandeliers, porcelains, art objects and
furnishings. Like the Library, the Museum too, over the years, has been
affected by restoration and rearrangement interventions, which, from the
first opening, commissioned in 1872 by the curators of the time Roberto
Boldù, Giacinto Namias and Giambattista Lucetti, through the dismantling
in war periods and new display choices, have given it its current
appearance.
The area on the ground floor which was restored by
Carlo Scarpa in the 1960s also forms part of the museum itinerary.
Spaces and services
total area: 1,670 m²
visitable area: 1,540
m² (of which 830 m² on the second floor and 710 m² between the garden
and the Scarpa area)
artistic deposits: 150 m²
reception services
on the ground floor: 385 m²
exhibition halls: 17
paintings
exhibited: 172
furnishings on display: 204
porcelain and exhibits:
327
audio guides in Italian, English and French
guided tours
informative materials in Italian, English, French, German, Spanish and
Russian.
The origin of the artistic commission of the Querinis, which dates
back to the wedding between Francesco Querini and Paola Priluli,
celebrated in April 1528 and on the occasion of which Jacopo Palma il
Vecchio created the portraits of the spouses, also marks the beginning
of the establishment of the collections ancient, growth that lasted
until the end of the 18th century. In the following centuries other
painters, including Marco Vecellio, Sebastiano Bombelli and Nicolò
Cassana, were called to portray the illustrious members of the family.
At the same time, craftsmen and painters were commissioned to embellish
the halls of the building with stuccos, frescoes (made mostly by Jacopo
Guarana in the second half of the eighteenth century) and pictorial
cycles. The latter two nucleuses of the 18th century, entrusted by
Andrea Querini to Pietro Longhi and Gabriel Bella, who created,
respectively, the series of the Seven Sacraments and a set of 67
canvases of Scenes of Venetian life, originally arranged for the house
of countryside.
Among the main works can be distinguished:
paintings. For a total of about 400 paintings, the artists present
include Andrea Schiavone with the Conversion of Saint Paul, Giovanni
Bellini with the Presentation in the Temple, Jacopo Palma il Vecchio and
his great-grandson Jacopo Palma il Giovane, with, among other works, a
Self-portrait, Lorenzo di Credi, Giambattista Langetti, Bernardo
Strozzi, Marco and Sebastiano Ricci with the three canvases, the latter,
which make up the Allegory of the day, Giambattista Tiepolo with the
Portrait of a Dolfin Procurator and General da Mar, Pietro Liberi, Luca
Giordano, Pietro Longhi of which 30 canvases are exhibited which include
the two cycles of Hunting in the valley and the Seven Sacraments and
Gabriel Bella with his works dedicated to the festivities, the
judiciary, the regattas and the official ceremonies of the Republic of
Venice.
Sculptures. This nucleus includes some works of great
quality, in particular seven marble busts, depicting philosophers, a
young pupil and a couple of saints (St. John the Evangelist and St. John
the Baptist), sculpted by the Baroque artist Michele Fabris, known as
l'Ongaro. They are exhibited in the portego room together with the Bust
of Cardinal Angelo Maria Querini by Giacomo Cassetti and a clay sketch
of Letizia Bonaparte made by Antonio Canova in 1805 and given to
Giovanni Querini by Giovanni Battista Sartori in 1857.
Drawings and
prints. The Querini collection includes 34 ancient drawings, including
works by Gian Francesco Penni (Coronation of Charlemagne), Ludovico
Carracci, Tintoretto, Marco Ricci and the schools of Giovanni Bellini
and Titian. The print collections are much more substantial: 2,634
single prints and about 200 illustrated volumes, with works by Venetian
engravers from the 15th to the 18th century.
Furnishings. Among the
furnishings on display, mostly of eighteenth-century Venetian
manufacture, there are consoles, mirrors, two living rooms and a
bedroom. A third living room, on the other hand, is a nineteenth-century
work by the architect Giuseppe Jappelli.
porcelain. The Museum has a
service in Sèvres porcelain, made up of 244 pieces and accompanied by
bisque figurines and vases which were purchased in Paris in 1795-96 by
Alvise Querini.
Art objects. Evidence of the family's interests and
daily life are also the artistic objects that complete the layout of the
rooms, including a seventeenth-eighteenth-century fund of musical
instruments, a collection of table clocks and specimens of celestial and
terrestrial globes.
Coins and medals. The numismatic collection of
the Querinis, later merged into the museum, was also substantial: 2616
pieces, including 870 Greek and Roman coins, 141 Venetian coins and 429
modern coins and medals (Italian and foreign). The collection suffered
losses in the looting of the building carried out in 1849 by the
Patriots of the Italian Circle.
After the birth of the Foundation, the art collections were enriched
through purchases and thanks to donations from private individuals. Some
paintings, twentieth-century sculptures and works of contemporary art
have become part of the collections.
The main funds are:
Mazzariol Fund. It was born in 1992 from the desire to remember Giuseppe
Mazzariol, director of the Foundation from 1958 to 1974, and his
activity as an art historian and critic. Donated by the artists
themselves, the collection includes works by Edmondo Bacci, William
Congdon, Mario Deluigi, Virgilio Guidi, Le Corbusier, Augusto Murer,
Zoran Music, Fabrizio Plessi, Alberto Viani and Emilio Vedova; an
architecture and design section with works by Gae Aulenti, Mario Botta
and Achille Castiglioni.
Fund From Venice. In 1990, the painter
Eugenio Da Venezia donated a fund of works and a bequest to the
Foundation for a project to rediscover the Venetian figurative art of
his time. The fund was then enriched with other drawings and paintings
offered by his heirs and other collectors.
Padoan Fund. In 2001
Reanato Padoan donated to the Foundation a collection of art objects
that belonged to his parents, owners of an antique shop in Venice. The
collection consists of porcelain, majolica, silver, bronze, enamel,
crystal and glass.
Contemporary art. The collection, the result of
the donation of one of their works by artists who have exhibited at the
Foundation, includes among others Mona Hatoum, Ilya Kabakov, Joseph
Kosuth, Giulio Paolini, Kiki Smith and Qiu Zhijie.
In 1949 the Presidential Council of the Foundation decided to begin the restoration of some areas of the Palazzo. Manlio Dazzi, then director, entrusted Carlo Scarpa with the task of rearranging part of the ground floor, rendered unusable by the frequent phenomenon of high water, and the back garden. The restoration started only ten years later, under the direction of Giuseppe Mazzariol, a friend and supporter of Scarpa, and ended in 1963. The intervention, which saw the elimination of the previous nineteenth-century operations and the restoration of the walls, was divided into four themes: the new access bridge to the Palazzo, the entrance with the high tide defense barriers, the portego designed to provide a space for exhibitions and conferences and the garden.