Ca Rezzonico on the Grand Canal. Click on images to enlarge them.
In The Stones of Venice John Ruskin remarks that this palazzo is a “less extravagant [example] than usual” of “the Grotesque Renaissance time” (11.140), but in his later “Notes on Venetian Palaces” (11877) he indulged his penchant for invective, declaring the “Palazzo Rezzonico . . . the stupidest of the Pesaro type; its foundations mere Newgate, with no variety of size or fine placing of stones; its pillars mere heaps of cheeses' the brackets of its main balcony blank stones, doubly vulgar by the equality of their intervals; the lions with their tongues out at the bottom, feather helmets in the main story, and heads cut off at the third, equally stupid; and the ship’s cabin elliptical windows at the top as ugly in their mouldings and in their shape. It is the only building I know in Venice which is as bad as anything we do now.” (24.440).
More of Ruskin's Venice
- St. Mark’s
- The Palazzo Ducale, Venice
- The Scuola de San Rocco
- On the Grand Canal
- Leaving the Grand Canal
- On the way to Venice from the mainland
- Venice: Details and Corners
Photographs 2020. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Ruskin, John. The Works. Ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. “The Library Edition.” 39 vols. London: George Allen, 1903-1912.
Last Modified 20 March 2040