The Smith Mangilli Valmarana palace is a palace in Venice, located in the Cannaregio district and overlooking the Grand Canal, where the Rio dei Santi Apostoli flows into it.
It is best known for having been the residence of the English consul
Joseph Smith, who had been Canaletto's agent in the sale of his
paintings to the English.
The palace was originally a Byzantine
Gothic building, but when it became the seat of the English embassy and
Smith's residence, it was transformed by the latter according to the
taste of the time: in 1743 the painter and engraver Antonio Visentini
designed the new facade and the works followed, which lasted until 1751.
The new façade only reached up to the current first noble floor.
In 1784 the palace became the property of Count Giuseppe Mangilli, who
added the floors above it and entrusted the redecoration of the interior
to Giannantonio Selva: he created a luxurious and unitary series of
rooms in the neoclassical style, still perfectly preserved today.
The neoclassical building consists of three floors with a mezzanine
and mezzanine in the attic, where an indented cornice runs.
The
ground floor has a portal placed centrally and surmounted by a tympanum.
The two noble floors each have four rectangular tympanum
single-lancet windows arranged regularly on the surface and divided by
pairs of pilasters on the first floor, which is characterized by the
insertion, in the centre, of a large round arch between two Corinthian
semi-columns supporting a eardrum larger.