Overview
A museum overlooking the Venetian Lagoon
Museum Fortuny overlooks the Venetian lagoon, in the premises of the 16th-century Palazzo Pesaro built by Venetian nobleman Benedetto Pesato and expanded several times over the centuries. It overlooks Rio di Ca’ Michiel on one side and Campo San Beneto on the other. After passing to different families, it was bought by painter and fashion designer Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo in the late 19th century.
Fortuny restored it and settled there in 1907, setting up a small textile workshop with companion and muse Henriette Nigrin. Two floors of the building were dedicated to the artist’s atelier, which produced printed silk and velvet fabrics, while he continued to decorate the building, creating the splendid mural known as The Winter Garden, covering 140 square metres on three walls of one room.
Today, the rooms of the palace still house the museum, the atelier where the artist devoted himself to textiles, painting, theatre set design and photography, and the family’s antique collections, including textiles, tapestries, clothes, carpets, pottery, majolica, statues, weapons and armour. Don’t miss the Wagner Hall, dedicated to the great composer greatly admired by Mariano Fortuny who was inspired to create a cycle of paintings.
