Palazzo Ducale - Doge’s Palace

from july 28, 2007 to november 25, 2007

After Paris and New York, this large-scale exhibition dedicated to the relationship between Venice and the world of Islam arrives in the city itself, finding an ideal venue in the Doge’s Palace, a building that is the very symbol of the Venetian Republic’s thousand-year history.
The fruit of collaboration between scholars from the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Musei Civici Veneziani, the exhibition is promoted by the Venice City Council and by the Fondazione di Venezia, with the participation of Venezia Musei. The catalogue is published by Marsilio.

The exhibition charts the complex and intense relationship between Venice and the vast area of the Muslim world. The hundreds of exhibits – including paintings, glassware, ceramics, metalwork, textiles, books and prints – come from prestigious Venetian collections and from important museums in Europe and America. Illustrating how interaction between the two cultures affected the development of artistic languages within them, the material charts the continuous exchange of knowledge and technical know-how between artists, craftsmen, merchants and entrepreneurs. Furthermore, it also recounts a tale of refined and skilful diplomacy.
Complementary to the show itself is an interesting itinerary through the city in discovery of the various extant traces of the historical and artistic links between the two cultures. A series of events related to the theme of the exhibition will be held.

The only European power to have permanent plenipotentiaries in the cities of the Near East, Venice would develop as a great maritime empire largely because of its ability to maintain relations with the other side of the Mediterranean. In effect, the Republic developed a rational and pragmatic approach to the world of Islam. Capable of understanding and appreciating its achievements in the world of science and philosophy, the city also showed itself capable of establishing a special relationship with the great Muslim dynasties of the Ayyubids, the Mamelukes and the Ottomans - relationships that survived the vicissitudes of history.
The aim of the exhibition is to highlight the important results of this integration. Divided according to themes, it looks at all areas of artist production: painting, sculpture, miniatures, cartography, metalwork, glass, jewellery, textiles, carpets and many others. All in all, there are some two hundred works of remarkable quality, wealth and variety. Amongst them figure masterpieces of Venetian painting from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century – works by such artists as Bellini, Carpaccio, Veronese and Tiepolo – together with drawings, miniatures and extremely rare works of cartography.

All Museums in Venice: Horaries, location, etc..