Palazzo Labia

Palazzo Labia is a baroque palace in Venice, Italy. Built in the 17th–18th century, it is one of the last great palazzi of Venice. Little known outside of Italy, it is most notable for the remarkable frescoed ballroom painted 1746–47 by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, with decorative works in trompe l'oeil by Gerolamo Mengozzi-Colonna.

In a city often likened to a cardboard film set, the Palazzo is unusual by having not only a formal front along the Grand Canal, but also a visible and formal facade at its rear, and decorated side as well, along the Cannaregio Canal. In Venice, such design is very rare. The palazzo was designed by the architect Andrea Cominelli (by Alessandro Tremignon according to others), the principal facade is on the Cannaregio Canal; a lesser three bayed facade faces the Grand Canal. A later facade probably designed by Giorgio Massari is approached from the Campo San Geremia.

The Labia family, who commissioned the palazzo, were originally Catalan and bought their way into nobility in 1646, hence considered arriviste by the old Venetian . The wars with the Ottomans had depleted the coffers of the Republic of Venice which then sold inscriptions into nobility, thus giving political clout. It has been said that they compensated their lack of ancestors by a great display of wealth. Today the Palazzo Labia is the sole remaining example of this ostentation.

It is the members of the Labia family of the mid 18th century to whom the palazzo owes its notability today, it was inhabited by two brothers with their wives, children and mother. The brothers Angelo Maria Labia and his brother Paolo Antonio Labia employed Tiepolo at the height of his powers to decorate the ballroom. Employing Tiepolo seems to have been the most remarkable thing the brothers ever achieved. Angelo Maria became an Abbé, merely in order to escape the political obligations of an aristocrat of the Republic. Curiously his holy employment did not prevent him marrying. His wife however was a commoner, which indicates an almost morganatic status to the marriage. Angelo's chief interests were constructing a marionette theatre, which concealed real singers behind its scenes. The marionettes often performed satirical plays which Angelo wrote himself. In later life he failed to endear himself to Venetian society by becoming an informer to the dreaded inquisition. His younger brother Paolo, married conventionally into the old Venetian aristocracy, a class prepared to accept the Labia's money and hospitality if not equality. Paolo too never assumed any public duties. It appears that it was their mother, Maria Labia, who was the intellectual driving force of the family, in her youth a great beauty, she was painted by Rosalba Carriera. The French traveller and social commentator Charles de Brosses reported that in old age she had a lively wit, flirtatious nature and possessed the finest collection of jewels in Europe. This collection was also portrayed in some of Tiepolo's work in the palazzo.

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