The Fortuny Museum in Venice
In the countryside of San Beneto, Venice lies the old Palazzo Pesaro Degli Orfei – a vast, and beautiful Gothic-style palace that once belonged to the Pesaro family. These days it is home to the treasures of the Fortuny Museum (http://www.museiciviciveneziani.it/frame.asp?pid=5&musid=2&sezione=musei). It was Granadian artist Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871-1949) – a modern and cosmopolitan man who had spent time living in Paris, the epicentre of Orientalism – who converted the building in the 20th century into his own studio for photography, painting, textile design, fashion, and Oriental inspired silk lamps.
Most likely, it was the allure of the Oriental – and its identification as a source of creativity, which brought Fortuny to Venice – a city which was, according to Proust, “overflowing with the Orient.” In the same way that the search for the Orient took French painter Delacoix to North Africa, where he discovered the ancient cultures, famously saying “I thought I would find the Orient, and I discovered that the old world was still alive.” The conviction at the time was that the Orient held a secret of humanity that could not be found in Europe.
It was in Venice, where Fortuny moved with his family at 18 at a time of great industrial development, that his taste for the Orient found new channels of expression – through his work as business man and inventor. The evidence of all this creative and industrious activity abounds at the Fortuny Museum. Despite the nomadic quality to Fortuny’s life, the palazzo was his home for more than 50 yeas – as well as the place where he made and sold his creations.
And it was there that he practised techniques which would become world-famous, such as his fabric and textile design (including the revolutionary Delphos dress). As well as making lamps, Fortuny took his experimentation with light to the theatre setting, where the newest technology in electric lighting was mixed with a rich, colourful visual. Fortuny preferred to project his coloured lights onto the rounded walls of the famous Fortuny Dome than onto a plain wall – thus transforming forever the world of theatre design.
Paul Oilzum
Proust, in whose vision of the floating city Fortuny played a large part, wrote that his fabric designs had true poetic quality. Find out for yourself when you rent apartments in Venice
Translated by: Poppy
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