Multimedia copper melting cast |
Venetie MD by Jacopo de' Barbari (1500) |
Venice also has nearly 50 miles of ancient documents stored in the State Archive over at the Frari -- Venetians documented everything for centuries -- and research indicated that Geto was the area where the waste from the old copper smelter was dumped, which later morphed into the Ghetto Nuovo.
The Geto before the Ghetto |
Parochet - Classic damask green silk - second half of 16th century |
Venice had allowed Jews to enter the city as war refugees after they were expelled from Spain in 1492 -- the same time that Christopher Columbus set off to discover the New World -- and Portugal in 1496. They also implemented a deliberate strategy of welcoming other religious and national communities like Germans, Orthodox Greeks, Albanians, Persians and Turks, communities that were important for the republic's economic activities. Each of the foreign communities was assigned a zone in which to operate.
Gilt leather panel - late 16th-early 17th century |
The exhibition is divided into ten sections:
- Before the Ghetto
- Cosmopolitan Venice
- The Cosmopolitan Ghetto
- Synagogues
- Jewish Culture and the Role of Women
- Trade in the 17th and 18th Century
- Tales of the Ghetto. The Shadow of Shylock
- Napoleon: the Opening of the Gates and Assimilation
- Treves Room - Collecting & Collectors
- The Twentieth Century
Marc Chagall Rabbino N. 2 1914 – 1922 olio su tela cm 104 x 84 Venezia, Ca’ Pesaro - Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna ©Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Archivio Fotografico |
In 1914, while visiting Vitebsk (now Belarus), where he was born, Chagall realized that the traditions he had grown up with were disappearing, and he wanted to document them. He paid a beggar to pose in his father's prayer clothes. He had intended to return to Paris, but was stuck in Russia until 1923 after World War I and the Russian Revolution broke out. Then, in 1923, he brought the painting with him to Paris and found out that much of the work he had left there had disappeared during the war.
So, before he left his studio, he made two more paintings of The Praying Jew after the original 1914 composition -- that is how serious he was about the record he wanted to leave. The original is now in the Kunstmuseum in Basel; the other 1923 painting is in the Art Institute in Chicago; the 1923 painting here in Venice is normally on display at Ca' Pesaro, but is now happily inside the Doge's Apartment at Palazzo Ducale as long as Venice, the Jews and Europe is running.
Go see the Chagall.
Ghetto in Venice today |
Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog
On March 29, 1516, the Venetian Senate decreed that "The Jews must all live together." Five hundred years later, Venice is commemorating the creation of the Jewish Ghetto, the very first time the word "ghetto" was used to signify a segregated part of a city.
ReplyDelete