The Exhibition - Serenissime Trame

The Exhibition

SerenissimeTrame

CARPETS FROM THE ZALESKI COLLECTION AND RENAISSANCE PAINTINGS

A story of collecting and passion for art

The Galleria Giorgio Franchetti at Ca’ d’Oro, Venice, opened the SERENISSIME TRAME exhibition on Thursday 23 March, curated by Claudia Cremonini, Moshe Tabibnia and Giovanni Valagussa. This was the first museum presentation of the Zaleski collection and features a selection of twenty-six very early carpets from the near East, chosen from an important collection, probably the most complete in the world.

The exhibition in the extraordinary Venetian building, produced by the Polo Museale del Veneto and the Fondazione Tassara of Brescia, was a tribute to the collecting passion of Giorgio Franchetti, founder of the Ca’ d’Oro state museum, who concentrated his youthful interests on carpets and nourished a marked interest in the decorative arts.

In 2014 the Fondazione Tassara received the donation from the Zaleski family of a collection of great scientific value consisting of 1325 antique carpets for the future creation of a specialist museum dedicated to their conservation and presentation to the public and to scholars.

A nucleus of very rare carpets made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has been selected from the Zaleski collection. These are some of the most prized types, which came to Venice along the trade routes from the Orient: extraordinary, highly coloured textiles composed of elaborate weaves with a powerful symbolic charge.

Serenissime Trame

FROM 23 MARCH TO 10 SEPTEMBER 2017

Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca’ d’Oro, Cannaregio 3932, Venezia

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The exhibition

A selection of twenty-six very early Oriental carpets selected from a vast and precious collection has been shown for the first time. The exhibition has been intended to also highlight the small but precious nucleus of carpets in the Franchetti collection with the permanent inclusion of three of the rarest textile products from his collection in the museum exhibition. 

The comparison with some Italian paintings from between the mid-fifteenth century and the mid-sixteenth century, chosen from an area of cultural influence strictly tied to the domains of the Serenissima, allowed immediate confirmation of the widespread circulation of these luxury items in the northern area, particularly Lombardy, Veneto and Este.

A unique experience

The exhibition presented very rare carpets matched with precious paintings to recount the passion of two men: Giorgio Franchetti, patron and founder of the Ca’ d’Oro museum in Venice, which he set up at the start of the twentieth century and then donated to the city; and Romain Zaleski, a businessman of French-Polish origin, Italian by adoption, who donated his collection of 1325 carpets, from all over the world and dating from between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, to the Fondazione Tassara.

THE ORIENTAL CARPETS WERE AMONG GIORGIO FRANCHETTI’S FIRST PURCHASES. WE HAVE SOUGHT AN OPPORTUNITY FOR HIGHLIGHTING PIECES UNTIL NOW LITTLE SEEN OR STUDIED. ALONGSIDE THEM, WE ARE PLEASED TO TELL A STORY OF COLLECTING AND PATRONAGE THAT MAY HAVE A PARALLEL IN THE PRESENT WITH THAT OF ZALESKI.

CLAUDIA CREMONINI – DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEO CA’ D’ORO AND CO-CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION

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