Formation | 1971 |
---|---|
Founder | Sir Ashley Clarke |
Type | NGO |
Legal status | Charity |
Purpose | Art and architecture conservation |
Region | Venice |
Chairman | Guy Elliott |
Website | Official website |
Formerly called | Art & Archives Rescue Fund (AARF) |
Venice in Peril Fund CIO is a British registered charity. [1] It raises funds to restore and conserve the art and architecture of Venice, and to investigate ways to protect them against future risks, particularly rising sea levels. Although it focuses on the conservation of specific sites, Venice in Peril maintains its concern for the wider environmental issues affecting the city and the lagoon. In support of its conservation work, Venice in Peril Fund also promotes a deeper understanding of Venice, its history, the contribution it has made to world culture and its modern challenges, so as to encourage responsible and informed engagement with the city. As part of this educational mission, it organises regular lecture series in the UK and occasional visits to Venice itself. It also provides annual bursaries for students of conservation at City & Guilds of London Art School. [2] Venice in Peril Fund is a member of the Association of International Private Committees for the Safeguarding of Venice. [3]
The predecessor to the Venice in Peril Fund was the Art & Archives Rescue Fund (AARF), which was created as the British response to the 1966 Venice flood. Sir Ashley Clarke, former British Ambassador to Rome and at that time chairman of the British Italian Society, was asked to chair a committee to raise funds to help rescue artworks and buildings in Venice and Florence, which had also flooded. Besides Clarke, the trustees were Sir Kenneth Clarke, the Earl of Drogheda, Sir Frank Francis, Lionel Robbins and A. W. Tuke. The AARF continued its conservation work until it was reconstituted as the Venice in Peril Fund in 1971.
In 1971, UNESCO appealed to its member states to collaborate in helping to save the entirety of Venice. In response, Clarke re-founded the AARF as the Venice in Peril Fund. He set up a board of trustees whose stated objective was to help save and maintain the world-famous artistic and architectural treasures of Venice. John Julius, Viscount Norwich, joined as Chairman the same year, [4] with Clarke serving as the Vice Chair. [5]
Under the chairmanship of John Julius Norwich, who was supported by the efforts of trustees such as Clarke, Carla Thorneycroft, Sir John Pope-Hennessy and Nathalie Brooke, Venice in Peril became a leading force in the city's conservation. [6] Venice in Peril established itself at the forefront of the Venice conservation movement. [7]
To boost the funding efforts in 1977, Peter Boizot, the founder of Pizza Express, created the Pizza Veneziana. Until 2019 a percentage of the sale price of every Pizza Veneziana sold was donated to Venice in Peril. [8] [9] £2 million were donated between 1977 and 2015. [10]
In 2003 Venice in Peril Fund organised a ‘state of knowledge’ conference on the lagoon of Venice, with the collaboration of Churchill College, Cambridge and Corila. The aim of the project was to gather together the work of scholars and experts in a cross-disciplinary effort to exchange knowledge and assess the challenges facing Venice and its lagoon. This resulted in two books, both commissioned by Venice in Peril. A scholarly and technical volume, Flooding and Environmental Challenges for Venice and its Lagoons: State of Knowledge, was published in 2005 by Cambridge University Press, [11] and a more accessible book, The Science of Saving Venice, was published in 2004. [12] In 2009, another book commissioned by Venice in Peril was published: The Venice Report, Demography, Tourism, Financing and Change of Use of Buildings. [13]
In 2011, during the Venice Biennale, Venice in Peril mounted an exhibition of photographs of Venice by prominent photographers, including Candida Höfer, to raise awareness and funds. It was entitled Real Venice and received critical acclaim. [14]
In November 2019, Venice suffered its worst flooding since the foundation of the fund in 1966. A 2020 Venice in Peril appeal funded conservation efforts to restore and protect several public buildings that had been particularly badly affected by the flood.
By Venice in Peril's 50th anniversary in 2021, the Fund had completed over 75 conservation and restoration projects in Venice. The work continues, with recent major projects including the conservation of Canova's memorial in the Frari church and the Iconostasis in Torcello Cathedral in memory of John Julius Norwich. Venice in Peril's representatives continue to draw attention to the evolving challenges facing the city. [15]
Guy Elliott took up the post of Chair in April 2022 and Anthony Roberts became Vice Chair.
Antonio Canova was an Italian Neoclassical sculptor, famous for his marble sculptures. Often regarded as the greatest of the Neoclassical artists, his sculpture was inspired by the Baroque and the classical revival, and has been characterised as having avoided the melodramatics of the former, and the cold artificiality of the latter.
Venice is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 126 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are linked by 472 bridges. The islands are in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay lying between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers. In 2020, around 258,685 people resided in greater Venice or the Comune di Venezia, of whom around 51,000 live in the historical island city of Venice and the rest on the mainland (terraferma). Together with the cities of Padua and Treviso, Venice is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE), which is considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.6 million.
World Monuments Fund (WMF) is a private, international, non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic architecture and cultural heritage sites around the world through fieldwork, advocacy, grantmaking, education, and training.
Torcello is a sparsely populated island at the northern end of the Venetian Lagoon, in north-eastern Italy. It was first settled in 452 CE and has been referred to as the parent island from which Venice was populated. It was a town with a cathedral and bishops before St Mark's Basilica was built.
John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich,, known as John Julius Norwich, was an English popular historian, travel writer, and television personality.
The Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, commonly abbreviated to the Frari, is a church located in the Campo dei Frari at the heart of the San Polo district of Venice, Italy. It is the largest church in the city and it has the status of a minor basilica. The church is dedicated to the Assumption of Mary.
PizzaExpress (Restaurants) Limited, trading as PizzaExpress and or Pizza Marzano, is a British multinational pizza restaurant chain, with over 500 restaurants across the United Kingdom and 100 overseas in Europe, Hong Kong, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Saudi Arabia. It was founded in 1965 by Peter Boizot. In July 2020, the business was taken over by its bondholders under a debt-for-equity swap with previous owner Hony Capital. In November 2020, Hony Capital left the business and the group restructure was completed, helping to cut the casual dining chain's debt by more than £400 million.
The Ca' d'Oro or Palazzo Santa Sofia is a palace on the Grand Canal in Venice, northern Italy. One of the older palaces in the city, its name means "golden house" due to the gilt and polychrome external decorations which once adorned its walls. Since 1927, it has been used as a museum, as the Galleria Giorgio Franchetti.
The War of the League of Cambrai, sometimes known as the War of the Holy League and several other names, was fought from February 1508 to December 1516 as part of the Italian Wars of 1494–1559. The main participants of the war, who fought for its entire duration, were France, the Papal States, and the Republic of Venice; they were joined at various times by nearly every significant power in Western Europe, including Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, England, the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Florence, the Duchy of Ferrara, and the Swiss.
Mazzorbo is one of various islands in the northern part of the Lagoon of Venice. Like the other islands in this part of the lagoon, it was the site one of the earliest settlements in the lagoon which predated the development of Venice. However, these islands then declined and were eventually abandoned. In the 1980s the architect Giancarlo De Carlo built a brightly coloured residential neighbourhood to help to repopulate Mazzorbo. In 2019 its population was 256. It is linked to Burano by a wooden bridge. It was once an important trading centre but is now known for its vineyards and orchards. Its main attraction is the fourteenth century church of Santa Caterina.
Sir Julius Benedict was a German-born composer and conductor, resident in England for most of his career.
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Carla Thorneycroft, Baroness Thorneycroft was the wife of Conservative Party politician and Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft. Lady Thorneycroft helped establish the Venice in Peril Fund and was a noted philanthropist and patroness of the arts.
The Assumption of the Virgin or Frari Assumption, popularly known as the Assunta, is a large altarpiece panel painting in oils by the Italian Renaissance artist Titian, painted in 1515–1518. It remains in the position it was designed for, on the high altar of the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari or Frari church in Venice. It is the largest altarpiece in the city, with the figures well over life-size, necessitated by the large church, with a considerable distance between the altar and the congregation. The images above and below are not Titian's work, they are by Palma Vecchio. It marked a new direction in Titian's style, that reflected his awareness of the developments in High Renaissance painting further south, in Florence and Rome, by artists including Raphael and Michelangelo. The agitated figures of the Apostles marked a break with the usual meditative stillness of saints in Venetian painting, in the tradition of Giovanni Bellini and others.
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Sir Henry Ashley Clarke was a British diplomat who was ambassador to Italy. Later he was chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund.
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