hellovenezia

The great love stories in the city’s past. From Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, to Bianca Cappello, Grand-duchess of Tuscany, to Desdemona victim of the Moro.
From S. Croce to SS. Apostoli, from S. Polo to S. Mark’s. Historic palazzos with three great styles

While Juliette’s balcony in Verona is attacked every year by thousands of lovers armed with indelible felt-tipped pens ready to declare their eternal love, Venice as a city overall, city of love par excellence, is certainly no less considered.

Desdemona

In fact romantic rhetoric considers it the promised land for any new love story, or the right destination to confirm a love story with all the rituals, a sash with the colours of the Italian flag, a trip in a gondola, various celebrations and stamped paper, all included in the price of specialised agencies, and Palazzo Cavalli, next to Ca’ Farsetti with a balcony view of the Rialto Bridge is the marriage-office of the local council.
However, in its thousand years’ history Venice has had some very interesting love stories take place there.
One is told by William Shakespeare in 1603, the story of Othello, the (jealous) Moro of Venice.
A complex story that searches into the depths of the human soul and behaviour and feelings, and into the multitude of different situations that arise, not least those of race, skin colour and prejudice.
The scene is pure Venetian, like the leading players, Desdemona, her father Brabanzio, Roderigo, Iago and Cassio, while there is some doubt about Othello’s origins, a Commander in the Venetian army in the war against the Turks in Cyprus, nobody really knows how dark-skinned he was and certainly not where he came from.
Legend holds that Desdemona’s home was Palazzo Contarini Fasa, which overlooks the Grand Canal immediately next to Palazzo Ferro Fini, seat of the Veneto Regional Council, facing the Basilica of the Madonna della Salute.
“The houses in this gothic Moor style, as narrow as Othello’s jealousy, fall straight into the canal” said Luis Aragon, French poet and author from the 20th century, and he briefly but effectively describes the building, which, in direct competition with the famous Verona balcony, boasts a magnificent balcony inlaid with concentric volutes, perhaps the setting for the loving pursuits of Desdemona.
The balcony can be admired when travelling along the Grand Canal, and visitors from outside Venice are strongly recommended to hire a gondola, or to travel past it by just a few meters in a water bus on the ACTV lines.
Just a century earlier, Venice was the stage for another complicated love affair, which not only involved the heart but several diplomatic and political channels in the Republic.
It is that of Caterina Cornaro, the future Queen of Cyprus.
Caterina Corner (Cornaro) was born in Venice to a famous noble family, on 25th November 1454. She was educated in a convent in Padua, and when she was 14 she was given as wife by proxy to James II of Lusignano, King of Cyprus and Armenia, and he married her on 30th July 1468.
Just four years later the effective, sumptuous marriage was celebrated.
A marriage that lasted about one year, Caterina was widowed and, due to her origins, Cyprus was left to fall under the influence and appetites of Venice.
A series of “coups” were defeated thanks to the direct intervention of the Republic of Venice and its fleet, which saved Caterina and her family.
The pressing, interested and final solution by the Serenissima then obliged the Queen, like it or not, to abdicate in favour of the future Venetian holders.
She was welcomed triumphantly on her return to Venice (the sumptuous Historic Water Regatta refers directly to that episode) and in compensation Caterina was appointed “domina Aceli”, i.e. Lady of Asolo.
In that lovely town in the Treviso district she lived with the title of Queen and her sumptuous palazzo is well remembered in the chronicles, as a famous meeting place for literature academics and artists, including, among others, Lorenzo Lotto, Giorgione da Castelfranco, Pietro Bembo.
Several Venetian places remember the queen, like the Palazzo where she was born: Ca’ Corner della Regina in the Santa Croce district, ACTV stop S. Stae, the Church with the family chapel, where her funeral was held on 10th July 1510: SS. Apostoli in Cannaregio (ACTV stop Ca’d’Oro), and the nearby Church of S.Salvador (ACTV stop Rialto) where her mortal remains were finally moved to, and where they still rest today.

 Caterina Corner (Cornaro), Ca'Corner della Regina and the tomb of Caterina in the church of San Salvador a Venezia

The last stop in our itinerary following crazy, desired, imposed and even lost love, takes us to Palazzo Cappello in S. Polo (ACTV stop S. Silvestro), first of the Venetian homes of Bianca Cappello (another important one is Palazzo Cappello Trevisan in Canonico, near to St. Mark’s Square).
A woman who was said to be very beautiful and she certainly looks it in the portraits we have of her.
When she was 15 she ran away with the Florentine Pietro Bonaventuri, who had courted her and who she fell desperately in love with. They left Venice the night of 28th November 1563, taking the family jewels with them as booty.
It caused a terrible scandal and she was immediately repudiated by her father, Bartolomeo. The affair reached the Council of Ten, the terrible Venetian magistrates who, through the Avogadori di Comun, sentenced that the two be banished from the city and put a price on Bonaventuri’s head “dead or alive”.
In the meantime they had reached Florence and married. Life was very difficult for them, because Bonaventuri had “no art or craft”.
By chance, Bianca met Francesco De Medici, Regent of Tuscany, son of the Grand Duke Cosimo, immediately after the latter had abdicated from the throne.
Francesco fell in love with her and the beautiful Venetian returned his love, she who loved wearing pearls and precious perfumes.
She found a “job” at court for her husband and they began a ménage à trois that the Grand Duchess Giovanna of Austria, Cosimo’s wife, was strongly against, who, according to the Prince, was guilty of giving him “just” six daughters and no sons.
In 1572 Bianca’s husband was mysteriously killed in the street. In 1577 the De Medici had their much desired male heir (who died a few years later) and a year later, Giovanna of Austria also died in a strange accident.
Now Francesco and Bianca were free to marry, which they did first secretly in 1578 and then officially in 1579, despite the thousands of obstacles placed before them by the Grand Duke’s brother, Cardinal Ferdinando, by the Medici family and by the Florentine people.
The Republic of Venice was informed of the marriage to the prince by official routes, and immediately reviewed the sentence by the Venetian Avogadori, and appointed Bianca “True and special daughter of the Republic”.
So love always wins in the end, with a touch of imagination on our part.
The two remained together until a fateful dinner in their villa in Poggio a Caiano in 1587. They both fell “ill” at the same time with tertian fever, which led to a very long and agonising illness that lasted about two weeks.
They died and the remains, again twisted together in a strange post mortem ménage à trois, of Francesco, Giovanna and Bianca, were recently analysed by Florence University, and its seems that they had taken, but it is only supposed, arsenic.
After Bianca’s death, given the contingent reasons of the state, Venice did not remember her at all and even forbade any form of grieving by her family in the city.

 Bianca Cappello (part.), Alessandro Allori, Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi

We would like to make up for them, by remembering this unusual and controversial story, now that we are below the renaissance windows of Palazzo Cappello in S. Polo, many loves and almost 420 years later.