Fortuny: the house museum

The Italian textile house Fortuny was founded nearly a century ago in Venice, writes Rocky Casale in The New York Times. Its founder was “inspired by the paintings of his own father, Marià Fortuny i Marsal, whose work still hangs in Madrid’s Prado Museum.” Hidden away in a quiet campo in Sestiere San Marco, this “magnificent fifteenth century Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei”houses the Museo Fortuny,” notes Sotheby’s. “Palazzo Fortuny used to be one of the palaces of the Pesaro family, patrons of Bellini and Titian,” writes Rona Goffen at City Secrets, until it was bought by Spanish artist and designer Mariano Fortuny -- “the textile maker and designer, to whom one is particularly grateful for ravishing pleated silks” -- in 1899.  

The museum is “darkly lit by Fortuny lamps, draped in rich fabrics and filled with an eclectic array of antiquities, curios and artworks,” observes Sotheby’s. “The enormous first floor atelier has an extraordinary fin de siècle atmosphere that vividly evokes the spirit of Fortuny’s bohemian lifestyle.” Over the past decade, Belgian art dealer, antiques guru and all-round tastemaker Axel Vervoordt has “put on exquisite exhibitions at Palazzo Fortuny, becoming an unbeatable highlight of the Venice Biennale’s frenzy,” writes Benoit Loiseau at Wallpaper.