Levada: Ca Marcello – The Calieron Confraternity’s Christmas Party

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photograph by manfredi bellati

Levada: Ca Marcello – The Calieron Confraternity’s Christmas Party. The Calieron’s Christmas party took place at the confraternities “headquarters” at Villa Marcello in the heart of the Veneto region.  Ca Marcello is a beautiful example of a Palladian style villa, and since the sixteenth century is still lived in by descendants of the noble Marcello family. Surrounded by a harmonious eighteenth century park, the gardens and the villa are open to the public upon request and are also available for vacation rentals.

  The Confraternity Calieron’s Christmas Party. Members of the Calieron Confraternity congregate in the kitchen for a group photo. Over the chimney the Marcello family crest. The culinary noble gentlemen’s private club meets periodically, and twice a year hosts a dinner party for family and friends where each member is allowed to invite a chosen number of guests. Their “uniform”, dark or pinstriped suits underneath which an apron with the confraternity’s embroidered crest and a golden lapel pin, bear the exclusive’s club insignia. Red Chef’s hats contribute to the festive spirit.

 photograph by manfredi bellati

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 In the kitchen the gentlemen carve the bollito misto or mixed boiled meats ready for the waiters to serve.

 

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Alvise Alvera accepts a special gourmet chestnut mostarda from a guest.

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 Giorgio Montesi tastes the pheasant broth.

 

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Family soup tureens await the hand-made in Parma anolini and the pheasant’s broth.

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 A lot of muscle is needed to whisk the perfect mashed potato.

The decorations on the Christmas tree also bear the insignia of the Calieron Fraternity.   The word caileron in Veneto dialect is a big copper pot in which you cook polenta and Calieron is also the trophy, which is “up for grabs” each year among the confraternity members in the challenge between the stoves.

 

Meanwhile…in the dinning room waiters in crisp white livery uniforms put the finishing touches to the tables. Gloves will be worn later for serving the meal.

 photograph by manfredi bellati

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Seasonal and elegant table centerpieces were created with Magnolia leaves, radicchio from Treviso and cauliflower florets.

Dodo Franchin and Riniera Montesi with their beautiful creation.

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photograph by manfredi bellati

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 The dinning room was set up on the ground floor.

 

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 Calieron president, Gianfranco Sgaravatti gave many speeches though out the evening.

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photo by giorgio montesi

Calieron president Gianfranco Sgaravatti and host Vettor Marcello head the confraternity members bringing the chafing dishes with the bollito misto to the dinning room.

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Waiters follow with vegetable…

photograph by manfredi bellati 

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The food arrives at the table…. and, wait for it…

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With a spectacular gesture…all together… the gentlemen lift the lids off the chafing dishes …. to a great hand of applause by the guests….

 photo by giorgio montesi

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The dinner party was also held in honor of host Vettor Marcello’s seventieth birthday with a cake specially cooked by Giorgio Montesi.

 photograph by manfredi bellati

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 “bunny girls” in lace dresses and the birthday “boy” pose with the cake for photos…

photograph by manfredi bellati 

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A special treat, Count Vettor Marcello conducts a private visit to the piano nobile after dinner. The main floor is enriched by a whole cycle of frescoes by Giambattista Crosato, the most important fresco-painter of the XVIII century together with Tiepolo. 

 

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photograph by manfredi bellati

A detail of the ceiling of the piano nobile and one of its Murano chandeliers.

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photo by giorgio montesi

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

 

Venice – Lido: The Healing Garden at the San Camillo Hospital.

 

Venice – Lido: The Healing Garden at the San Camillo Hospital. The Healing Garden project, Un Giardino Per Rivivere at the San Camillo Hospital on the Lido, should be ready next Spring for patients to enjoy. It is a healing garden for the senses, a natural place, where sound, touch, color and smell  contribute a therapeutic relief to suffering.

Donate: You too can contribute to the Healing Garden project, log onto the website of Un Giardino Per Rivivere and go to: Come Aiutarci.

The Healing Garden at the San Camillo Hospital. The Healing Garden project was conceived by Garden designer, Benedetta Piccolomini, landscape architect, Paolo Sgaravatti and neurologist, Francesca Meneghello.

Venice: Lilli Doriguzzi – an artist’s studio.

Venice: Lilli Doriguzzi – an artist’s studio.  Artist Lilli Doriguzzi lives and works in Venice. Multiplo 4, 2006, Venezia, as you have seen it, fragile, empty and transparent, is reduced to a single inscription on a transparent tube of glass, presented in its own container.

 

Lilli Doriguzzi in her studio besides her Xstante, 2009 sculptures. “The themes of the body and architecture come about as a necessary form of meditation and if it is necessary thus to lose oneself, evidence of passage must leave its trace upon the space around. The use of transparent materials, painting of sheets of acetate, sewn nets, threads of nylon or metal or light, tracing on cloth or paper, inflatable structures, reflective surfaces, writings and sculpture in glass fill space allowing the gaze to cross over the work without passing through it; signs and signals that weightlessly fill the void.” Lilli describes her work.

 

Lilli Doriguzzi – Canal Grande – Gaming Table sculpture. “ The space I live in may be synthesized in a line: the loop of the Grand Canal which divides Venice in two parts, enhancing its strange and distinctive labyrinthine quality.  Along its length are seven public gondola ferry stops (traghetti), like stitches holding together the two opposite banks of the canal.  The idea of this game is to underline the uniqueness of this city and the special way in which people meet and relate to one another.”  The aim is for two people to meet on either side of the canal before time runs out… “The Grand Canal is crisscrossed by seven lines along its course which, as well as supporting the structure of the game sculpture, are placed in correlation with the traghetti stops.”   An hourglass keeps time while two players throw a dice, if luck is on their side, they will land on the same side of the gondola crossing and meet each other, thus both winning the game. 

 

Lilli Doriguzzi – Canal Grande – research.  “I drew the outline of the Grand Canal on a piece of paper, downloading if from Google Earth, then I cut along the outline and set the two halves of paper some centimeters apart to link them.”

 

Lilli Doriguzzi – Canal Grande – tabletop version. The tabletop version of the Canal Grande board game sculpture. “The spotless white enamel surface becomes enriched with elements to be used in the game: arolla pine wooden dice, purpleheart wooden tokens, ebony wooden counting pegs, glass rings, a perspex hourglass sit in the two side drawers.

 

Lilli Doriguzzi – C G Libro d’Artista.  One of the seven silver brooches contained in one of the seven limited edition CG 2012 signed artist books. Also in the elegant book are three digital photo prints.

 

Handsome, Arte, Lilli’s cat looks on.

Venice: Palazzo Fortuny - Fortuny and Wagner - Wagnerism in the visual arts in Italy

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Venice: Palazzo Fortuny - Fortuny and Wagner - Wagnerism in the visual arts in Italy. The exhibition, Fortuny and Wagner - Wagnerism in the visual arts in Italy at the Fortuny Museum, until April 8, and curated by Paolo Bolpagni, installation by Daniela Ferretti, marks the bicentennial of Richard Wagner's birth (Leipzig, 1813 - Venice, 1883) in 2013. It is the result of lengthy studies on the influence that the German composer and the “Wagnerism” phenomenon had at an iconographic and aesthetic level on the visual arts in Italy from the end of the nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century. This is the very first time this theme has been studied or been the object of an exhibition.

 Above:  In the glorious setting of Palazzo Fortuny, sculptures from the Mariano Fortuny collection, undated gypsum, patinated gypsum. Glasses for clouds’ projections, c. 1905, tempera on glass.

 

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The VIP Ladies, President of The Venice International Foundation Franca Coin, architect and curator of the Fortuny Museum, who also is the installation designer of the exhibition Daniela Ferretti and Gabriella Belli director of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, the institution  that looks after the eleven Venetian museums.

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Contessnally note: Venice Foundation goes international. This Autumn, Friends of Venice, Italy Inc. was born.  Friends of Venice, Italy aims to encourage and offer new opportunities for encounters between institutions and organizations that enliven Venice socially, culturally, environmentally and economically and to support innovative ideas, helping their creation, in order to, contribute to the diffusion of knowledge and a greater awareness of the problems and emergencies Venice faces, and to help to preserve its heritage and its identity.

 

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Palazzo Fortuny - Fortuny and Wagner - Wagnerism in the visual arts in Italy.  Mariano Fortuny (1871-1949) played a key role, as he was the author of a Wagnerian Cycle with 46 paintings (all belonging to the museum) and numerous engravings; the entire cycle is on display here for the very first time. The museum is the perfect place for an exhibition like this: Spanish by birth but Venetian by adoption, Mariano Fortuny was greatly influenced by the figure of Richard Wagner who, in turn, had a very intense relationship with the city, and spent long periods of his life there.

Above: The Studio of the Artist, undated, tempera on canvas by Mariano Fortuny and a Self-Portrait, 1947, tempera on cardboard.

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Giuseppe Tivoli’s Portrait of Richard Wagner, 1883, oil on canvas.

 

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From the City of Leipzig, Thomas Krakow coordinator of The Year, Richard Wagner 2013, president of the Associazione Richard Wagner di Venezia Alessandra Althoff Pugliese and the director of Klinger Forum Museum in Leipzig Goerg Zochert.

  Courtesy Palazzo Fortuny, Musei Civici di Venezia

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Palazzo Fortuny - Fortuny and Wagner - Wagnerism in the visual arts in Italy.  The characters and vicissitudes of Wagner’s musical dramas (Valkyries, Nibelungs, maiden-flowers, Parsival, Siegfrieds, Tristans ...) occur repeatedly in the paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, illustrations and postcards during that period in both Italy and the rest of Europe.

Above: Mariano Fortuny, Wagnerian Cycle – Parsifal, The Flower Maidens, 1896, oil on canvas.

 

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Palazzo Fortuny - Fortuny and Wagner - Wagnerism in the visual arts in Italy.  Curator of the exhibition Paolo Bolpagni, “Wagnerism was a true cultural fashion that, in its diverse expressions (literary, musical, and painting) enjoyed widespread and profound diffusion. In the field of the visual arts it was one of the most typical manifestations of the aesthetic style at the turn of the eighteenth century, between late Naturalism, Symbolism and Art Nouveau.”

 

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The beautifully restored, with micro financing from The Venice International Foundation, Mariano Fortuny’s stage model for The Reingold applied Bayreuth’s Theatre model, 1903.

   

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Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, Bayreuth Theatre floor plan, undated, pencil ink and tempera on paper.

Courtesy Palazzo Fortuny, Musei Civici di Venezia 

Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, Self- Portrait, 1890, photograph.

 

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Architect and curator of the Fortuny Museum, who also is the installation designer of the exhibition Daniela Ferretti is photographed with Mariano Fortuny’s original mannequins.

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Model of Villa Pisani in Stra, Sante Benato and Giovanni Gloria from a drawing by Gerolamo Frigimelica, carved and painted wood, c. 1720.

 

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Head of the restoration team Stefano Provinciali.

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In the foreground, Teodoro Wolf Ferrari’s Notte, 1898, oil on canvas.

  Architect Barbara Foscari and the Dean of Architecture, IUAV University of Venice Amerigo Restucci.

 

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Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo.

 

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Giuseppe Barbieri, professor of History of Modern Art and director of the department of Art History of Ca' Foscari University and Silvia Burini Pro-Rector at Ca’ Foscari University.

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Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo’s The Discord, undated, tempera on canvas.

 

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Barbara Berlingieri

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Joan Brossa – Antoni Tapies, Carrer de Wagner, 1989, artist’s book.

 

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Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo – Costumes: L-R Cloak, Jago’s costume c. 1935. Stage costume, after 1910. Surcoat after 1920. All printed silk velvet.

Contessnally note: the famous Fortuny printed  cloth on the wall.

  Luxury lace fabric designer Nadia La Valle.

 

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Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo’ s famous Delphos silk taffeta pleated dress with glass beads, after 1909, Manifattura Fortuny.  Printed silk gauze cloth on the walls after 1910.

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 Contemporary jewelry and glass designer Maria Grazia Rosin.

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Antoni Tapies, Urbilder (Diptych), 1988, oil on canvas.

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Palazzo Fortuny - Fortuny and Wagner - Wagnerism in the visual arts in Italy: The Bayreuth Theatre. Buy a seat and contribute through micro financing to the restoration, organized by The Venice International Foundation, of this historic model. Since 1891 Mariano Fortuny was completely captivated by the allure of the staging of Wagner’s theatre, however many years passed before he concretely measured himself against the theatre experimenting at length with both lighting and technology and the preparation of scenographic sketches.  It was in fact starting with the realization of scenographies linked to the works of Wagner that the model (at top) was born in 1903.  Made of wood and metal and now kept in the Fortuny atelier, it is a reconstruction of the layout and the risers of the setting of the German Bayreuth Theatre.