art.wikisort.org - Museum

Search / Calendar

The Doge's Palace (Italian: Palazzo Ducale; Venetian: Pałaso Dogal) is a palace built in Venetian Gothic style, and one of the main landmarks of the city of Venice in northern Italy. The palace was the residence of the Doge of Venice, the supreme authority of the former Republic. It was built in 1340 and extended and modified in the following centuries. It became a museum in 1923 and is one of the 11 museums run by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.[2]

Doge's Palace
Palazzo Ducale
Doge's Palace facing the lagoon.
Click on the map for a fullscreen view
Established1340 (1340)
LocationPiazza San Marco 1,
30124 Venice, Italy
Coordinates45°26′02″N 12°20′24″E
TypeArt museum, Historic site
Visitors1.4 million (2018)[1]
DirectorCamillo Tonini
Websitepalazzoducale.visitmuve.it

History


Drawing of the Doge's Palace, late 14th century
Drawing of the Doge's Palace, late 14th century

In 810, Doge Agnello Participazio moved the seat of government from the island of Malamocco to the area of the present-day Rialto, when it was decided a palatium duci (Latin for "ducal palace") should be built. However, no trace remains of that 9th-century building as the palace was partially destroyed in the 10th century by a fire. The following reconstruction works were undertaken at the behest of Doge Sebastiano Ziani (1172–1178). A great reformer, he would drastically change the entire layout of the St. Mark's Square. The new palace was built out of fortresses, one façade to the Piazzetta, the other overlooking the St. Mark's Basin. Although only few traces remain of that palace, some Byzantine-Venetian architecture characteristics can still be seen at the ground floor, with the wall base in Istrian stone and some herring-bone pattern brick paving.

Political changes in the mid-13th century led to the need to re-think the palace's structure due to the considerable increase in the number of the Great Council's members. The new Gothic palace's constructions started around 1340, focusing mostly on the side of the building facing the lagoon. Only in 1424 did Doge Francesco Foscari decide to extend the rebuilding works to the wing overlooking the Piazzetta, serving as law-courts, and with a ground floor arcade on the outside, open first-floor loggias running along the façade, and the internal courtyard side of the wing, completed with the construction of the Porta della Carta (1442).

In 1483, a violent fire broke out in the side of the palace overlooking the canal, where the Doge's Apartments were. Once again, an important reconstruction became necessary and was commissioned from Antonio Rizzo, who would introduce the new Renaissance language to the building's architecture. An entire new structure was raised alongside the canal, stretching from the ponte della Canonica to the Ponte della Paglia, with the official rooms of the government decorated with works commissioned from Vittore Carpaccio, Giorgione, Alvise Vivarini and Giovanni Bellini.

Another huge fire in 1547 destroyed some of the rooms on the second floor, but fortunately without undermining the structure as a whole. Refurbishment works were being held at the palace when in 1577 a third fire destroyed the Scrutinio Room and the Great Council Chamber, together with works by Gentile da Fabriano, Pisanello, Alvise Vivarini, Vittore Carpaccio, Giovanni Bellini, Pordenone, and Titian. In the subsequent rebuilding work it was decided to respect the original Gothic style, despite the submission of neo-classical alternative designs by the influential Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. However, there are some classical features – for example, since the 16th century, the palace has been linked to the prison by the Bridge of Sighs.

As well as being the ducal residence, the palace housed political institutions of the Republic of Venice until the Napoleonic occupation of the city in 1797, when its role inevitably changed. Venice was subjected first to French rule, then to Austrian, and finally in 1866 it became part of Italy. Over this period, the palace was occupied by various administrative offices as well as housing the Biblioteca Marciana and other important cultural institutions within the city.

View of Doge's Palace, Campanile and San Marco Square from the Grand Canal. ca. 1870–1890
View of Doge's Palace, Campanile and San Marco Square from the Grand Canal. ca. 1870–1890

By the end of the 19th century, the structure was showing clear signs of decay, and the Italian government set aside significant funds for its restoration and all public offices were moved elsewhere, with the exception of the State Office for the protection of historical Monuments, which is still housed at the palace's loggia floor. In 1923, the Italian State, owner of the building, entrusted the management to the Venetian municipality to be run as a museum. Since 1996, the Doge's Palace has been part of the Venetian museums network, which has been under the management of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia since 2008.


Description



Exterior


Facing the Grand Canal on the Piazzetta San Marco, with Doge's Palace on the left. The Marciana Library is on the right.
Facing the Grand Canal on the Piazzetta San Marco, with Doge's Palace on the left. The Marciana Library is on the right.
Palazzo Ducale, south colonnade, Venice, Italy. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection
Palazzo Ducale, south colonnade, Venice, Italy. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection

The oldest part of the palace is the wing overlooking the lagoon, the corners of which are decorated with 14th-century sculptures, thought to be by Filippo Calendario and various Lombard artists such as Matteo Raverti and Antonio Bregno. The ground floor arcade and the loggia above are decorated with 14th- and 15th-century capitals, some of which were replaced with copies during the 19th century.

In 1438–1442, Giovanni Bon and Bartolomeo Bon built and adorned the Porta della Carta, which served as the ceremonial entrance to the building. The name of the gateway probably derives either from the fact that this was the area where public scribes set up their desks, or from the nearby location of the cartabum, the archives of state documents. Flanked by Gothic pinnacles, with two figures of the Cardinal Virtues per side, the gateway is crowned by a bust of Mark the Evangelist over which rises a statue of Justice with her traditional symbols of sword and scales. In the space above the cornice, there is a sculptural portrait of the Doge Francesco Foscari kneeling before the Lion of Saint Mark. This is, however, a 19th-century work by Luigi Ferrari, created to replace the original destroyed in 1797.

Today, the public entrance to the Doge's Palace is via the Porta del Frumento, on the waterfront side of the building.


Courtyard


Courtyard of the Doge's Palace, facing the San Marco basilica
Courtyard of the Doge's Palace, facing the San Marco basilica
The Scala dei Giganti, flanked by Mars and Neptune
The Scala dei Giganti, flanked by Mars and Neptune

The north side of the courtyard is closed by the junction between the palace and St Mark's Basilica, which used to be the Doge's chapel. At the centre of the courtyard stand two well-heads dating from the mid-16th century.

In 1485, the Great Council decided that a ceremonial staircase should be built within the courtyard. The design envisaged a straight axis with the rounded Foscari Arch, with alternate bands of Istrian stone and red Verona marble, linking the staircase to the Porta della Carta, and thus producing one single monumental approach from the Piazza into the heart of the building. Since 1567, the Giants’ Staircase is guarded by Sansovino's two colossal statues of Mars and Neptune, which represents Venice's power by land and by sea, and therefore the reason for its name. Members of the Senate gathered before government meetings in the Senator's Courtyard, to the right of the Giants’ Staircase.


Museo dell'Opera


Over the centuries, the Doge's Palace has been restructured and restored countless times. Due to fires, structural failures, and infiltrations, and new organizational requirements and modifications or complete overhaulings of the ornamental trappings there was hardly a moment in which some kind of works have not been underway at the building. From the Middle Ages, the activities of maintenance and conservation were in the hands of a “technical office”, which was in charge of all such operations and oversaw the workers and their sites: the Opera, or fabbriceria or procuratoria. After the mid-19th century, the palace seemed to be in such a state of decay that its very survival was in question; thus, in 1876 a major restoration plan was launched. The work involved the two facades and the capitals belonging to the ground-floor arcade and the upper loggia: 42 of these, which appeared to be in an especially dilapidated state, were removed and replaced by copies. The originals, some of which were masterpieces of Venetian sculpture of the 14th and 15th centuries, were placed, together with other sculptures from the facades, in an area specifically set aside for this purpose: the Museo dell’Opera. After undergoing thorough and careful restoration works, they are now exhibited, on their original columns, in these six rooms of the museum, which are traversed by an ancient wall in great blocks of stone, a remnant of an earlier version of the palace. The rooms also contain fragments of statues and important architectural and decorative works in stone from the facades of the palace.


Doge's apartments


The rooms in which the Doge lived were always located in this area of the palace, between the Rio della Canonica – the water entrance to the building – the present-day Golden Staircase and the apse of St. Mark's Basilica. The disastrous fire in this part of the building in 1483 made important reconstruction work necessary, with the Doge's apartments being completed by 1510. The core of these apartments forms a prestigious, though not particularly large, residence, given that the rooms nearest the Golden Staircase had a mixed private and public function. In the private apartments, the Doge could set aside the trappings of office to retire at the end of the day and dine with members of his family amidst furnishings that he had brought from his own house (and which, at his death, would be promptly removed to make way for the property of the new elected Doge).


Institutional chambers


Palazzo Ducale, Sala del Senato, Venice, Italy. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection
Palazzo Ducale, Sala del Senato, Venice, Italy. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection
Neptune Offering Gifts to Venice (1748–1750) by Giovan Battista Tiepolo
Neptune Offering Gifts to Venice (1748–1750) by Giovan Battista Tiepolo
The Chamber of the Great Council. Behind the Doge's throne, is occupied by the longest canvas painting in the world, Il Paradiso of Tintoretto
The Chamber of the Great Council. Behind the Doge's throne, is occupied by the longest canvas painting in the world, Il Paradiso of Tintoretto

Old Prison or Piombi


Prior to the 12th century, there were holding cells within the Doge's Palace but during the 13th and fourteenth centuries more prison spaces were created to occupy the entire ground floor of the southern wing. Again these layouts changed in c.1540 when a compound of the ground floor of the eastern wing was built. Due to their dark, damp and isolated qualities they came to be known as the Pozzi (the Wells).[3] In 1591 yet more cells were built in the upper eastern wing. Due to their position, directly under the lead roof, they were known as Piombi.[3] Among the famous inmates of the prison were Silvio Pellico and Giacomo Casanova. The latter in his biography describes escaping through the roof, re-entering the palace, and exiting through the Porta della Carta.


Bridge of Sighs and the New Prisons


Capital #12 in the porch (counting as #0 the one at the corner near the Bridge of Sighs): Allegories of Virtues and Vices – Falsa fides in me semper est
Capital #12 in the porch (counting as #0 the one at the corner near the Bridge of Sighs): "Allegories of Virtues and Vices" – "Falsa fides in me semper est"

A corridor leads over the Bridge of Sighs, built in 1614 to link the Doge's Palace to the structure intended to house the New Prisons.[4] Enclosed and covered on all sides, the bridge contains two separate corridors that run next to each other. That which visitors use today linked the Prisons to the chambers of the Magistrato alle Leggi and the Quarantia Criminal; the other linked the prisons to the State Advocacy rooms and the Parlatorio. Both corridors are linked to the service staircase that leads from the ground floor cells of the Pozzi to the roof cells of the Piombi.

The famous name of the bridge dates from the Romantic period and was supposed to refer to the sighs of prisoners who, passing from the courtroom to the cell in which they would serve their sentence, took a last look at freedom as they glimpsed the lagoon and San Giorgio through the small windows. In the mid-16th century, it was decided to build a new structure on the other side of the canal to the side of the palace which would house prisons and the chambers of the magistrates known as the Notte al Criminal. Ultimately linked to the palace by the Bridge of Sighs, the building was intended to improve the conditions for prisoners with larger and more light-filled and airy cells. However, certain sections of the new prisons fall short of this aim, particularly those laid out with passageways on all sides and those cells which give onto the inner courtyard of the building. In keeping with previous traditions, each cell was lined with overlapping planks of larch that were nailed in place.

Madonna col bambino, the painting stolen on 9 October 1991 by Vincenzo Pipino after he hid in a cell in the New Prisons
Madonna col bambino, the painting stolen on 9 October 1991 by Vincenzo Pipino after he hid in a cell in the New Prisons

The only art theft from the Doge's Palace was executed on 9 October 1991 by Vincenzo Pipino, who hid in one of the cells in the New Prisons after lagging behind a tour group, then crossed the Bridge of Sighs in the middle of the night to the Sala di Censori. In that room was the Madonna col bambino, a work symbolic of "the power of the Venetian state" painted in the early 1500s by a member of the Vivarini school.[5] By the next morning, it was in the possession of the Mala del Brenta organized crime group. The painting was recovered by the police on 7 November 1991.[6]


Influences



Azerbaijan


The Ismailiyya building in Baku, which at present serves as the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, was styled after the Doge's Palace.[7]


Romania


The Central rail station, in Iași, built in 1870, had as a model the architecture of the Doge's Palace. On the central part, there is a loggia with five arcades and pillars made of curved stone, having at the top three ogives.


United Kingdom


The western façade of Templeton's Carpet Factory
The western façade of Templeton's Carpet Factory

There are a number of 19th-century imitations of the palace's architecture in the United Kingdom, for example:

These revivals of Venetian Gothic were influenced by the theories of John Ruskin, author of the three-volume The Stones of Venice, which appeared in the 1850s.


United States



19th-century imitations

National Academy of Design (1863–65), one of many Gothic Revival buildings modeled on the Doge's Palace
National Academy of Design (1863–65), one of many Gothic Revival buildings modeled on the Doge's Palace

The Montauk Club in Park Slope, Brooklyn (1889) imitates elements of the palace's architecture, although the architect is usually said to have been inspired by another Venetian Gothic palace, the Ca' d'Oro.

The elaborate arched facade of the 1895 building of Congregation Ohabai Shalome in San Francisco is a copy in painted redwood of the Doge's Palace.

The exterior of the Chicago Athletic Association building (1893) is based on the Doge's Palace.[8]


20th-century imitations

The ornate gothic style of the Doge's Palace (and other similar palaces throughout Italy) is replicated in the Hall of Doges at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, Washington by architect Kirtland Cutter.

The facade of the building is replicated at the Italy Pavilion in Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida.

Along with other Venetian landmarks, the palace is imitated in The Venetian, Las Vegas and its sister resort The Venetian Macao.


21st-century imitations

The Doge's Palace was recreated and is playable in the 2009 video game, Assassin's Creed II. In the game, one of the objectives is to get protagonist Ezio Auditore da Firenze to fly a hang-glider built for him by Leonardo da Vinci into the Palazzo Ducale in order to prevent a Templar plot to kill the current Doge, Giovanni Mocenigo. Though he arrives too late to prevent the Doge from being poisoned, he does manage to kill the assassin, Carlo Grimaldi, who was a member of the Council of Ten.

The interior of the Doge's Palace taken c. 1900
The interior of the Doge's Palace taken c. 1900
A Lion's Mouth postbox for anonymous denunciations at the Doge's Palace. Text translation: Secret denunciations against anyone who will conceal favours and services or will collude to hide the true revenue from them.
A "Lion's Mouth" postbox for anonymous denunciations at the Doge's Palace. Text translation: "Secret denunciations against anyone who will conceal favours and services or will collude to hide the true revenue from them".

See also



References


  1. "La classifica dei musei e delle mostre più visitate nel 2018". May 6, 2019. Retrieved Aug 1, 2020.
  2. "Doge's Palace (Palazzo Ducale)". Internet Archive. everycastle.com. Archived from the original on 20 January 2021. Retrieved 26 May 2022.
  3. Geltner, G., 2008. The Medieval Prison: A Social History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (pp.12)
  4. Geltner, G., 2008. The Medieval Prison: A Social History. Princeton: Princeton University Press (pp. 13)
  5. Davis & Wolman 2014.
  6. Davis, Joshua; Wolman, David (26 October 2014). Bearman, Joshuah (ed.). "Pipino: Gentleman Thief". Epic Magazine. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  7. "Ismailiyya Palace |". Sep 18, 2016. Retrieved Aug 1, 2020.
  8. "Our Iconic Building is Commemorating 125 Years, and We Want You to Celebrate with Us". Retrieved Oct 7, 2022.

Further reading



Primary sources



General sources




Preceded by
Ca' Vendramin Calergi
Venice landmarks
Doge's Palace
Succeeded by
Gallerie dell'Accademia

На других языках


- [en] Doge's Palace

[ru] Дворец дожей

Дворе́ц до́жей (итал. Palazzo Ducale, вен. Pałaso Dogal) в Венеции — великий памятник итальянской готической архитектуры, одна из главных достопримечательностей города. Находится на площади Святого Марка рядом с одноимённым собором. Хотя первое сооружение на этом месте стояло ещё в IX веке, строительство сегодняшнего здания было осуществлено между 1309 и 1424 годами, предположительно архитектором был Филиппо Календарио. В 1577 году часть дворца была уничтожена пожаром, и восстановлением здания занялся Антонио де Понти, творец моста Риальто.



Текст в блоке "Читать" взят с сайта "Википедия" и доступен по лицензии Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike; в отдельных случаях могут действовать дополнительные условия.

Другой контент может иметь иную лицензию. Перед использованием материалов сайта WikiSort.org внимательно изучите правила лицензирования конкретных элементов наполнения сайта.

2019-2024
WikiSort.org - проект по пересортировке и дополнению контента Википедии