The Seventeenth-Century Palazzo That Made an Artwork Seller Fall Again in Love With Venice
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A DECADE OR so in the past, Nicholas Ward-Jackson awakened one morning decided to get out of Venice. After almost 5 years, the English artwork seller and his spouse, Margherita, an Italian psychotherapist, had outgrown their small house and had been uninterested in the vacationers. However the day earlier than their scheduled return to London, the place they’ve one other residence, Ward-Jackson, now in his 80s, acquired a name from an actual property agent cousin of Margherita’s a couple of itemizing in Dorsoduro, a extra intimate neighborhood separated from the crowded cafes of Piazza San Marco by the Grand Canal. Reluctantly, he agreed to tour the property: a 3,500-square-foot condominium on the piano nobile, or second flooring, of a Seventeenth-century palazzo. As he walked round the primary corridor — a “very scruffy” area, he remembers, with three bedrooms on one aspect and a examine and the kitchen on the opposite — he was struck by how acquainted it felt. On his manner out, he ran into an older lady. “Nicholas, how pretty to see you,” she stated. “Are you again to purchase your outdated flat?”
Ward-Jackson was stunned to comprehend that he’d hung out there as a young person. His father, William, whose household owned a part of a newspaper syndicate in South Africa, traveled repeatedly for work; throughout a number of of his prolonged stays overseas, Ward-Jackson’s mom, Catherine, had rented that very condominium for herself, her eldest son and his two brothers. Though Ward-Jackson didn’t acknowledge the place, it will need to have left an impression: He had gone on to change into a collector of works by 18th-century Veneto artists and, within the Eighties, he’d inspired the English filmmaker Derek Jarman, who died in 1994, to direct “Caravaggio,” a film that Ward-Jackson co-wrote in regards to the lifetime of the early Seventeenth-century Baroque painter. Being in that sunlit corridor once more reminded him of all that he loves about Venice: the bookstores and the operas; late nights by the water (“I can’t actually clarify the standard of the darkness — it’s as if you happen to’re being lined in velvet”).
The couple determined to offer Venice one other probability. To revive their new house, they employed Mariangela Zanzotto, an Italian architect and artwork historian identified for preserving church buildings and different public buildings within the space. Margherita, in her mid-50s, and Ward-Jackson haven’t at all times shared the identical concepts about design — she likes fashionable artwork and furnishings; his style skews extra conventional — however they agreed on one necessary level: that the interiors ought to evoke the spirit of Venice with out being too literal. “There’s at all times a temptation right here to go for a very outdated look,” says Ward-Jackson on a blustery afternoon this previous April. “However Mariangela made it fairly up to date.” Zanzotto, who labored on the mission for almost two years, sourced native supplies corresponding to Istrian stone for the counter tops and Marmorino plaster (a mixture of limestone and powdered marble) for the partitions. “I don’t love to do one thing in a faux model,” she says. Her aim, she provides, was to “present the soul of Venice.”
Inside six very totally different household residences.
– Carl and Karin Larsson’s exuberant, art-filled homes in Sweden.
– An artwork seller’s unusually acquainted Venetian condominium.
– Is it structure or is it artwork? A Parisian couple rejoice the in-between.
– A household’s reimagined seaside home within the Philippines.
– Brandon Flynn and Jordan Tannahill’s cinematic East Village condominium.
WARD-JACKSON IS sitting on a teal velvet couch on the canal-facing aspect of the portego, a central reception space that runs the size of the constructing and is widespread in historic Venetian residences. On the wall above him, a pair of 18th-century work of regatta-winning Italian rowers — “moderately kitsch,” he says — dangle alongside a panorama {photograph} by the German artist Thomas Struth. The very first thing one notices in regards to the place is how quiet it’s. The second is Gilbert & George’s “Lick,” a 95-inch-tall photocollage from the English duo’s 1977 collection “The Soiled Phrases Photos,” which mixes self-portraiture with bleak photographs of city life. “I’m not satisfied it actually works,” says Ward-Jackson in regards to the placement of the piece, one in every of Margherita’s acquisitions, which is close to an intricate chandelier with Murano glass flowers and a nickel-plated brass flooring lamp designed in 1962 by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni. “We thought we may make your entire area right here full of up to date pictures, however the bother is that all of it begins to seem like a journey company.” Zanzotto shakes her head and laughs.
To the left of the doorway, within the kitchen, a spiral staircase winds upward to a rooftop terrace with views of the yard backyard and the bell tower of St. Mark’s Basilica within the distance. Though Zanzotto stored among the authentic tile work above the range, she added a crushed-brick-and-lime pastellone flooring and up to date the room with sage-colored fir cupboards, brightly hued beech chairs by Gio Ponti and a resin-coated pendant mild from Flos. Within the examine, she painted the partitions a daring shade of terra cotta and balanced some present parts — darkish wood-beam ceilings, an ornamental stone hearth — with a number of fashionable interventions: a sculptural Isamu Noguchi paper lamp; a round Willy Rizzo espresso desk in pink lacquer and brass; and a leather-based Jean Prouvé armchair in burgundy. “I’d prefer to have it’s a comfy area,” she says. “I don’t need it to be the type of palace the place you’re feeling like, ‘Oh, I’m in a palace.’”
Ward-Jackson appears extra fascinated with what’s on the partitions than within the furnishings, nearly as if the historical past of Italy comes alive in two thick impasto work, depicting a tempest and a battle, by the early 18th-century Veneto artist Antonio Maria Marini; or a portrait of a younger man from the varsity of the Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese. A member of Ward-Jackson’s workers emerges with some espresso, however he declines. “I’m sorry to be a bit decrepit right now,” he says. Aside from his workers, one in every of whom resides in a separate a part of the home, or the odd pal or member of the family visiting from England, he’s usually on his personal; Margherita and their two teenage sons at the moment are primarily based in London. However Ward-Jackson can’t think about being wherever else. “To inform you the reality, I’ve gone moderately mad,” he says with a wink. “I’ve received a horrible feeling I is likely to be trapped right here.”
Earlier than excusing himself to go lie down, he lingers over an unattributed portray of an 18th-century German aristocrat who, he explains, fell in love with Venice and was nearly adopted by the doge. “There have been plenty of foreigners,” says Ward-Jackson, “however perhaps nobody fairly as grand as him” — simply one other traveler who found himself within the metropolis and determined to remain.
