On on the big canal on La Giudecca, close to the Church of the Zitelle and Elton John's place, there's a cool little building that is known in local dialect as Tre Oci, or Three Eyes (click on the picture above for an enlargement). Its given name is the Casa di Maria, named after its architect, the moonlight-obsessed Italian painter, Mario de Maria (Marius Pictor), who built the house from 1910-1913, and who worked here -- mostly in isolation -- until his death in 1924. (Here's a wonderful Venetian moonlight painting by de Maria that hangs in the Musée d'Orsay.)
Does the little palazzo look familiar? It should. Take a look at this link. Tre Oci is a pint-sized, quirky, quasi-replica of the ultimate Venetian Gothic building, the Doge's Palace. If you peer out of any of the Three Eyes in Mario de Maria's former home, it's the Doge's Palace that stares right back at you, across one of the most sweeping and stunning vistas in Venice. De Maria quoted the Doge's Palace from the top down, starting with what Sir Banister Fletcher described as a "lace-like parapet of oriental cresting" ... the ziggy-zaggy crenulation on the top of the facade. Then there's the brickwork, an exact downscaled match. The "eyes" themselves are shaped like the windows of the Doge's Palace, as are the two little round port-holes. And finally there's the middle window upstairs flanked by the two Gothic spires, a near-direct lift.
A Venetian bank, the Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia, recently purchased Tre Oci from the de Maria estate, complete with its original furnishings and artwork, with the intention of turning it into a cultural center. I'll check on their progress and see if it is supposed to be opened to the public any time soon.
Progress...you are an optimist. Now if you run this website for ten years. I now know why Venice is timeless!
Posted by: kurt | April 27, 2004 at 08:14 AM
Is it that its a copy of the Ducal Palace or is it simply in that style? A style I don't recall seeing, except in these two examples, but isn't that the statistics of Venetion architecture? I always read that the basilica (San Marco) is gothic, but it looks not even similar to anything I've yet seen, even in Venice. Same for the Ducal Palace's bacino facing facade, 'gothic' they say. I suppose Barcelona has some facades in similar styling, at least to the La Tre Oci? Anyway, my hat off to the achitect of this echoing of the Ducal Palace and to me, some other stylings that recall the art deco of Barcelona. I like it.
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No doubt in my mind. Tre Oci is an architectural quotation of the Palazzo Ducale. Too many coincidences. No doubt other buildings in Venice use some of the "language" that the Palazzo Ducale uses. Ca D'Oro, for example, uses the parapet motif pretty exactly. But Tre Oci plagarizes (in a good way) paragraphs. No place else in the city does that .. not even close. The brick pattern (it's the only case of that, I've read). Parapets. Portholes. Center windows flanked by horns. Window shapes. And it looks right at the Palazzo Ducale. The one departure is the Art Nouveau (Tre Oci was pre-deco) iron balconies, which I love.
Posted by: Paul | April 27, 2004 at 04:55 PM
yes, facing the Ducal Palace is the pin point of your argument. I blame my dyslexia for mis-typing 'deco'. Tre Oci was built at the height of the Art Nouveau. My two favorite houses in Venice were built in late 19th century. Would have been very interesting if more palazzi had merged the Art Nouveau with the Venetian gothic styles. I'm shocked I haven't seen Tre Oci before. Thanks for featuring it.
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