The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

The big names of Venice
More than twenty Venetian palaces bear the Contarini name, and at one time
there were around thirty. The city has more than a dozen Morosini palaces,
and a plethora of such names as Loredan, Corner, Donà, Giustinian and Grimani.
Intermarriage between big families is one reason for these recurrences
– dynastic marriages were often marked by grafting the new relatives’ surname
onto the house’s original name. The other main explanation is that the sons
of wealthy patricians would often, upon receiving their shares of the father’s
estate, set up their own branches of the family in houses in other parts of the
city; if they bought a property from another member of the patriciate, the transaction
often resulted in a double-barrelled palace name. In some instances, a
building’s history of ownership can leave it trailing a three-part title, such as
the Palazzo Cappello-Trevisan-Miari, Palazzo Marcello-Foscarini-Sangiantoffetti
or the superbly melodious Palazzo Marcello-Pindemonte-Papadopoli. And why
stop at three Near San Stae there’s a house that’s properly known as Palazzo
Boldù-Ghisi-Contarini-Pisani, and if you want to be really pedantic you should
refer to the building occupied by the Danieli Hotel as the Palazzo Dandolo-Gritti-
Bernardo-Mocenigo.
obliged to sell the still unfinished palace to the Rezzonico family, who were
Genoese bankers. Despite having lashed out 100,000 ducats to buy their way
into the Libro d’Oro (at a time when 1000 ducats per annum was a comfortable
income for a noble), the new owners could afford to keep Massari employed
on the completion of the top floor, and then to tack a ballroom and staircase
onto the back. Among its subsequent owners was Pen Browning, whose
father Robert died here in 1889; and both Whistler and Cole Porter stayed
here briefly. The Ca’ Rezzonico is now home to the Museo del Settecento
Veneziano – see p.111.
After a couple of canals you pass the Palazzo Loredan dell’ Ambasciatore,
opposite the Ca’ del Duca. Taking its name from the Austrian embassy that
used to be here, it was built in the fifteenth century, and is notable mainly for
the figures in niches on the facade, which possibly came from the workshop
of Antonio Rizzo. On the far side of the next canal, the Rio di San Trovaso,
stand the Palazzo Contarini-Corfu and the Palazzo Contarini degli
Scrigni. The “Corfu” bit of the first name derives either from the fact that a
Contarini was once a military commander on that island, or from the name of
a family that lived in the parish before the Contarini. The two palaces form
a single unit; the Scrigni was built in 1609 as an extension to the Corfu, a
fifteenth-century Gothic house. A similar operation was carried out at the
Palazzi Barbaro (opposite, just after the Accademia bridge), with less jarring
results.
Yet another Contarini palace stands a few metres past the Accademia bridge
– the Palazzo Contarini-Polignac. This branch of the Contarini family
made itself rich through landholdings around Jaffa, and the dialect version of
that place name is the source of the alternative name for the palace: Contarini
dal Zaffo. The facade, which was applied to the Gothic building in the late fifteenth
century, represents a transitional phase between the highly decorative
style associated with the Lombardi and their imitators (see the Palazzo Dario,
p.204) and the classicizing work of Codussi.
The Venier family, another of Venice’s great dynasties (they produced
three doges, including the commander of the Christian fleet at Lépanto), had
their main base just beyond the Campo San Vio. In 1759 the Veniers began
the canal grande
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The Right Bank
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