Filippo Vincenzo Farsetti (Venice, 13 January 1703 - Venice, 22 September 1774), was an Italian art collector and patron of the arts.
Filippo was the son of Anton Francesco Farsetti and his wife Marina Foscari. The Foscari were an ancient Venetian patrician family, which reached its peak in the 14th–15th centuries with the dogeship of Francesco Foscari (1423-1457). The Farsetti, on the other hand, originally came from Tuscany, though they had divided into numerous branches that established themselves throughout Northern Italy. Filippo's branch had become part of the patrician class of Venice as late in 1664, by payment of a hundred thousand ducats. Though relatively recent arrivals, therefore, they were very rich, and this meant for Filippo a comfortable and carefree childhood and youth. He spent his first years engrossed in his studies and far from political concerns. The tranquility of those years contributed doubtless to his decision to receive minor orders, which is why he is often referred to as the “abate” Farsetti, though he never became a priest. In this context “abate”, though literally the word means “abbot”, was used at the time in a way similar to the French “abbé” as an honorific title for any cleric of minor rank.
Farsetti spent much of his life travelling, visiting among other places Rome, Naples, Florence, and Paris. His interest was in establishing friendly relations with many men of culture. He was also a great patron of the arts and by his patronage contributed to the introduction into Venice of Neoclassicism.
The art collection he formed in his residence on the Grand Canal, Ca' Farsetti, was famous and became a sort of museum that was open to the curious, to artists, to his fellow citizens and to foreign tourists, and its visitors included Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The collection is known to have included 253 plaster casts of classical and modern sculptures (mostly by Ventura Furlani), various copies in oils by Luigi Pozzi of works executed in Rome by Raphael and by Annibale Carracci. There were also models by Antonio Chichi in cork and pumice stone of the best known monuments of ancient Rome, along with works in terracotta, bronze and ancient marble, as also landscapes by Flemish artists like Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck) and by other famous masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including Titian, Antonio da Correggio, Salvator Rosa, Guercino, Tintoretto, Andrea del Sarto, Alessandro Magnasco, Pietro da Cortona, Padovanino, Giorgione, Luca Giordano, Palma Giovane and several of Farsetti's contemporaries, like Luca Carlevarijs, Sebastiano Ricci and Francesco Zuccarelli.
As to the works in terracotta, it is known that there were several terracottas by Stefano Maderno, and several of Maderno's terracotta sketches, which are now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, where they arrived after Tsar Paul I of Russia began acquiring Farsetti's collection in 1800, the transfer being completed in 1805 by Tsar Alexander I .
Among younger artists who frequented the collection were Antonio Canova, whose first sculptures were commissioned by Farsetti, who also patronized on a regular footing Francesco Algarotti. Farsetti also financed Alberto Fortis’s famous journey through Dalmatia.
Great admiration was also aroused by Farsetti’s villa at Santa Maria di Sala, created by transforming an existing property inherited from his uncle Anton Francesco Farsetti. Designed by Paolo Posi, Villa Farsetti distanced itself from the typical Venetian models to resemble in some regards Austrian tastes and anticipating neoclassical features. The entire complex included a reconstruction of Roman monuments of the Capitol, the Temple of Diana and that of Capitoline Jupiter, and also an enormous park decorated with statues, vases and artificial ruins. Of all the features, the most prominent was a botanical garden created with the advice of Louis Clérisson, full of rare and exotic plants. In fact, Farsetti himself was no mean botanist and was responsible, among other things, for introducing the magnolia into Italy.
Farsetti’s life did not end happily, since his lavish expenditure lead to financial difficulties and he was forced to sell many of his possessions. Moreover, a stroke left him mentally severely incapacitated. He had made a distant cousin, Daniele Filippo Farsetti, his heir.
Paolo Preto, “Filippo Vincenzo Farsetti”, in Dizionario bibliografico degli Italiani, vol. 45, 1995.
Notizie della famiglia Farsetti, [no date], p. 65.
Giovanni Antonio Moschini, Della letteratura veneziana del secolo XVIII fino a' nostri giorni, Stamperia Palese, Venezia, vol. 2, 1806, pp. 113–115.
Juergen Schulz, The New Palaces of Medieval Venice, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
Francesco Foscari was the 65th Doge of the Republic of Venice from 1423 to 1457. His reign, the longest of all Doges in Venetian history, lasted 34 years, 6 months and 8 days, and coincided with the inception of the Italian Renaissance.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, also known as GiambattistaTiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice who painted in the Rococo style, considered an important member of the 18th-century Venetian school. He was prolific, and worked not only in Italy, but also in Germany and Spain.
Andrea Palladio was an Italian Renaissance architect active in the Venetian Republic. Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily Vitruvius, is widely considered to be one of the most influential individuals in the history of architecture. While he designed churches and palaces, he was best known for country houses and villas. His teachings, summarized in the architectural treatise, The Four Books of Architecture, gained him wide recognition.
Ca' Rezzonico is a palazzo and art museum on the Grand Canal in the Dorsoduro sestiere of Venice, Italy. It is a particularly notable example of the 18th century Venetian baroque and rococo architecture and interior decoration, and displays paintings by the leading Venetian painters of the period, including Francesco Guardi and Giambattista Tiepolo. It is a public museum dedicated to 18th-century Venice and one of the 11 venues managed by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.
A bust is a sculpted or cast representation of the upper part of the human figure, depicting a person's head and neck, and a variable portion of the chest and shoulders. The piece is normally supported by a plinth. The bust is generally a portrait intended to record the appearance of an individual, but may sometimes represent a type. They may be of any medium used for sculpture, such as marble, bronze, terracotta, plaster, wax or wood.
The House of Contarini is one of the founding families of Venice and one of the oldest families of the Italian Nobility. In total eight Doges to the Republic of Venice emerged from this family, as well as 44 Procurators of San Marco, numerous ambassadors, diplomats and other notables. Among the ruling families of the republic, they held the most seats in the Great Council of Venice from the period before the Serrata del Maggior Consiglio when Councillors were elected annually to the end of the republic in 1797. The Contarini claimed to be of Roman origin through their patrilineal descendance of the Aurelii Cottae, a branch of the Roman family Aurelia, and traditionally trace their lineage back to Gaius Aurelius Cotta, consul of the Roman Republic in 252 BC and 248 BC.
The House of Foscari was an ancient Venetian patrician family, which reached its peak in the 14th–15th centuries, culminating in the dogeship of Francesco Foscari (1423–1457).
The Accademia di San Luca is an Italian academy of artists in Rome. The establishment of the Accademia de i Pittori e Scultori di Roma was approved by papal brief in 1577, and in 1593 Federico Zuccari became its first principe or director; the statutes were ratified in 1607. Other founders included Girolamo Muziano and Pietro Olivieri. The Academy was named for Luke the Evangelist, the patron saint of painters.
Stefano Maderno was one of the greatest Roman sculptors of the early 17th century.
Villa Foscari is a patrician villa in Mira, near Venice, northern Italy, designed by the Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. It is also known as La Malcontenta, a nickname which—according to a legend—it received when the spouse of one of the Foscaris was locked up in the house because she allegedly did not live up to her conjugal duty.
Antonio Francesco Gori, on his titlepages Franciscus Gorius, was an Italian antiquarian, a priest in minor orders, provost of the Baptistery of San Giovanni from 1746, and a professor at the Liceo, whose numerous publications of ancient Roman sculpture and antiquities formed part of the repertory on which 18th-century scholarship as well as the artistic movement of neoclassicism were based. In 1735 he was a founding member of a circle of antiquaries and connoisseurs in Florence called the Società Colombaria, the predecessor of the Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere la Colombaria, to foster "not only Tuscan Poetry and Eloquence, or one faculty only; but almost all the most distinguished and useful parts of human knowledge: in a word, it is what the Greeks called Encyclopedia".
The Pasquino Group is a group of marble sculptures that copy a Hellenistic bronze original, dating to ca. 200–150 BCE. At least fifteen Roman marble copies of this sculpture are known. Many of these marble copies have complex artistic and social histories that illustrate the degree to which improvisatory "restorations" were made to fragments of ancient Roman sculpture during the 16th and 17th centuries, in which contemporary Italian sculptors made original and often arbitrary and destructive additions in an effort to replace lost fragments of the ancient sculptures.
The House of Loredan is a Venetian noble family of supposed ancient Roman origin, which has played a significant role in shaping the history of the entire Mediterranean. A political dynasty, the family has throughout the centuries produced a number of famous personalities: doges, statesmen, magnates, financiers, diplomats, procurators, military commanders, naval captains, church dignitaries, writers, and lawyers.
Venetian Renaissance architecture began rather later than in Florence, not really before the 1480s, and throughout the period mostly relied on architects imported from elsewhere in Italy. The city was very rich during the period, and prone to fires, so there was a large amount of building going on most of the time, and at least the facades of Venetian buildings were often particularly luxuriantly ornamented.
Teodoro Matteini was an Italian painter, mainly of historical and religious subjects in a Neoclassical style.
Antonio Cappello (1494-1565) was a Venetian noble, a member of the San Polo branch of the Cappello family [it:Cappello (famiglia)]. A Procurator of St Mark's, he acted as ambassador to the court of Charles V at Gand, but is mainly remembered for his role as one of the main promoters of public art and architectural projects in sixteenth-century Venice. He resided in the palazzo on San Polo now known as Ca Cappello Layard and oversaw its redevelopment.
The Palazzo Loredan Cini is a Gothic-style palace located between the Palazzo Balbi Valier and the Rio San Vio on the Grand Canal, in the sestiere of Dorsoduro, Venice, Italy. The palace was formed from the amalgamation of the former Palazzo Foscari-Loredan with the adjacent Palazzo Grimani. The narrow facade on the Canal has no entrance, but the facade to the north on the Rio, has a single water door, and is connected to the adjacent campo by a bridge. The facade is decorated with two poliforas.
The Foscari were an ancient Venetian patrician family.
Filippo Morandi, usually known as Filippo da Rimini, was a humanist, teacher, writer and administrator in the Republic of Venice.
Maffeo Vallaresso or Valaresso (1415–1494) was a Venetian patrician, Renaissance humanist and prelate who served as the archbishop of Zadar (Zara) from 1450 until his death. A doctor in canon law and a collector of Greek and Latin manuscripts, he tried unsuccessfully on at least four occasions to be transferred to a more prestigious see.
