Circling the Palazzo Barbaro

Family Trip

Palazzo Barbaro detail

In early February, pre-pandemic, my family and I visited Venice, Italy, on winter holiday. Having taught courses on art patron Isabella Stewart Gardner and artist John Singer Sargent, I added finding the Palazzo Barbaro (San Marco 2840, Venice), a gorgeous palace on Venice’s Grand Canal, to my “must-see” list. 

The Palazzo holds an important place in history as a location of prolific partnerships and creativity – and oodles of New England connections. This landmark was home to the Palazzo Barbaro Circle, the center of American and European artistic life in Venice with visits from Sargent, Henry James, James McNeil Whistler, Robert Browning, and Claude Monet. Other members of the “Barbaro Circle” included Bernard Berenson, William Merritt Chase, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Edith Wharton, and Charles Eliot Norton.

I spotted the gorgeous Palazzo from across the canal, and my heart leaped. Although I could gaze upon it from numerous angles, it is sadly not open to the public. The property entrance now has a locked gate, but I grabbed some photos and fantasized about the amazing talent that inhabited this space. Some of my pic:

Rich History

John Singer Sargent, An Interior in Venice, 1898

In 1885, the Palazzo Barbaro was purchased for $13,500 by a wealthy pair of Bostonians, Daniel Sargent Curtis (a relative of artist John Singer Sargent) and his wife, Ariana Randolph Wormeley. They had emigrated from Boston permanently to Europe in 1878. Since 1881, they had leased the first floor of the Palazzo. 

The Palazzo soon became a hive for British and American painters, writers, and wealthy visitors. The Curtis’ son Ralph, an artist, introduced many creatives to his family. In the Palazzo’s Grand Salon, Sargent painted his famous portrait of the Curtis family (pictured on the right.) Of note, Mrs. Curtis could not stand the painting – felt she looked old and her son’s slouchy posture was unbecoming.

Henry James stayed at the Palazzo for several weeks in 1892 with Isabella Stewart Gardner, a leading American art collector, philanthropist, and founder of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The Gardners rented this palace seasonally from its expatriate American owners, Daniel and Ariana Curtis, who also counted James as a friend. Much to his delight, Gardner arranged for James to sleep in a four-poster bed draped with mosquito netting in the “divine old library.” In that library, Henry James wrote The Wings of the Dove.

Isabella fell in love with the Palazzo Barbaro, and she modeled her museum after it. Check out the original Palazzo and Gardner’s museum below.

Venice’s Palazzo Barbaro was the inspiration for Isabella’s museum. It has been described as the Palazzo turned inside out as you can see from the courtyard above.

Palazzo Barbaro’s Famous Visitors

Claude Monet, The Palazzo Dario, 1908

• Claude Monet visited Venice in 1908, relatively late in his career. He traveled there with his second wife, Alice, in early October and remained in the city for ten weeks. Having been invited by Mrs. Mary Hunter, a society hostess and patron of the arts whom Monet had met in London, the Monets stayed with her at the Gothic Palazzo Barbaro for two weeks before moving along the Grand Canal to a hotel.

Although the couple had planned to remain in Venice for only a short time, Monet repeatedly delayed their departure, starting a new painting almost every day until he had a full three dozen in the works.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903) Venetian Canal, 1880 black chalk and pastel on dark brown wove paper 11 7/8 in. x 8 1/16 in. (30.1 cm x 20.5 cm) Henry Clay Frick Bequest. Accession number: 1915.3.40

• James McNeill Whistler arrived at the Palazzo in September 1879 after a bankruptcy to make a series of Venice etchings. His etchings and pastels are some of the most beautiful and evocative images of Venice. In London, Whistler’s pastels were exhibited in three critical exhibitions.

Until he left Venice in November 1880, Whistler’s challenge was to capture the city’s ethereal beauty in an original way. In a letter of 1880, he declared: “I have learned to know a Venice in Venice that others never seem to have perceived . . .” Whistler’s pastels and etchings present the quiet streets and backwaters that lie beyond the Grand Canal. This approach marked a deliberate departure from the tradition of capturing the city’s major sites. 

William Merritt Chase, Venice, 1913

• William Merritt Chase was a multi-talented artist; a man prepared (and able) to explore modern and traditional stylistic ideas via city landscapes, studio interiors, society portraiture and still lifes. William Merritt Chase was one of the earliest painters to work in Venice using the new Impressionist style when he first visited in 1877.

In sketches like this, he uses short, loose brushstrokes to study the play of light, color, and reflections around a row of ordinary houses in the quiet Dorsoduro neighborhood, with the dome of the Chiesa dei Gesuati beyond. Some of his more well-known Venetian work dates from 1913 trip to the city.

Anders Zorn, ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER IN VENICE, 1894

• Anders Zorn, a Swedish artist, enjoyed the It was at the 1893 World Fair that artist Anders Zorn met his future great patron Isabella Stewart Gardner. The following year the Zorns travelled to Venice as guests of the Gardners and stayed at their Palazzo Barbaro. At the palazzo Zorn painted his famous portrait of Isabella with her arms stretched out as she enters exuberantly into the salon after watching fireworks over the Grand Canal. The Zorns and Gardners became life-long friends, and Isabella opened many doors for the artist.

• Edith Wharton spent her time at the Palazzo Barbaro in an unusual way. She used her visits to the Palazzo as material for her stories, namely Ralph Curtis’s rocky marriage and subsequent arguments became the plot of “The Verdict.”

She continued the drama, when Wharton compared the older woman’s new museum, modeled on the Palazzo Barbaro, to a provincial French railway station. Edith Wharton and Isabella Gardner barely spoke after this incident. I can see how that comment would make a relationship tricky.

The Palazzo Today

Having been recently structurally restored, the Palazzo Barbaro is still owned and very much cared for by the Curtis’ family today. It has featured in upwards of a dozen different films and perhaps more recognizable in the TV series Brideshead Revisited (1981), as the home of Lord Marchmain and his mistress, as well as in the film adaptation of Henry James’ Wings of The Dove (1997). The library as used by James remains untouched, including James’ desk.

Final Thoughts

When this pandemic has passed, grab your passport and head to Venice. Visit the art, hug the people, eat the food. You will not regret it.

I leave you with this video clip (the sound is real.) The Palazzo Barbaro is next to a conservatory and I could have sat and listened all day to the beautiful music.

Be well.

Resources
For a deeper dive, check out:
– Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle
– From the Editors: Domestic Harmony
– PALAZZO BARBARO
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For more stories, check out my
Current Seminar Offerings:
Brandeis – Fall 2020
John Singer Sargent (p. 4)