The Palazzo Rezzonico was designed by Baldassare Longhena in the 1660s for the Bon family who came upon financial hardship early in the 1700s. The building was, in any event, not even half finished for Longhena had died as the first floor was being erected.
The unfinished palace was sold to the Rezzonico family, bankers from Genoa who bought status with their new money. They are said to have paid 100,000 ducats - equivalent to two percent of the Republic's annual income - for a place in the Venetian aristocracy in 1687. Giorgio Massari was commissioned to complete their home, and the family hired the finest artists for the interior.
Today, the Palazzo Rezzonico is home to the Museo del Settecento Veneziano (Civic Museum of 18th-century Art). It was also the last home of poet Robert Browning who died here in 1889 in a small apartment on the first floor.
Although the atmosphere at the museum is that of a grand home, the artworks and exhibits have been assembled from various other 18th-century palaces. Among these are a range of elaborate chairs, with arms of gnarled tree trunks supported by Negro boys with ebony heads, tables carved with mermaids, and lacquered furniture which was all the rage in Venice of the day, but does not come close to the quality produced in the Orient.
