Episode #79: Cursed Art: Venice's Palazzo Dario (Season 9, Episode 3)
In our ninth season, in a topic suggested by you, our listeners, we’re uncovering the backstory behind some of the world’s most famed “cursed” objects in art, architecture, and archaeology. Today, we’re continuing with an episode I nearly wrote four years ago, all about a long-cursed palace on Venice’s Grand Canal, inspiring to both Ruskin and Monet: the Palazzo Dario (Ca’ Dario).
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Episode Credits:
Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Theme music by Alex Davis. Additional research and writing by Jordan McDonough.
ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.
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Recommended Reading
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Links and further resources
Google Arts and Culture: Monet's Venice
National Museum of Wales: Monet’s The Palazzo Dario
Monika Schmitter, “Odoni's Façade: The House as Portrait in Renaissance Venice”
The Art Institute of Chicago: Venice, Palazzo Dario
Atlas Obscura: The House that Kills
Episode Transcript
It’s one of those things where, as a museum curator, I sarcastically sigh wistfully, “It’s a rough life, but someone’s gotta do it.” And that’s when I get the opportunity to travel for my job-- and I’ve been exceedingly lucky in that I’ve been able to attend the Venice Biennale-- one of the best international showcases of art today-- multiple times in the past decade. And for many, there’s not much better than Venice, Italy. Venice, the Floating City, the City of Water, the City of Masks, has captivated visitors for centuries-- just imagining all those gleaming canals, vibrant palazzos, countless bridges, and domed basilicas can get even the seasoned traveler’s heart all aflutter.
But as I noted in Episode #17 of the podcast, there’s something unnerving about Venice at night--those blue canals look depthless and dark in the moonlight, the shadows across a bridge and around a tight corner distort something placid into something chilling--even sinister. So it’s no surprise that there are popular walking tours dedicated to the dark side of this peerless gem of a city--and they’re fun, too: I’ve even been on one myself. Any city with a history as long and colorful as Venice’s will no doubt have a plethora of creepy stories to share, but Venice is already a bit otherworldly during the daytime. At night, it’s a whole different ball game, where one of those gleaming palaces on the Grand Canal feels spookier, grimmer, and its darkened windows can force you to take a second glance over your shoulder as your gondola glides silently past. You wonder, perhaps, if keeping your distance is indeed the safest policy because that palazzo? It’s the most haunted--even cursed-- building in Venice proper.
Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are weirder, more outrageous, or more fun than you can imagine. This season, season nine, is all about curses in fine art and archaeology, a topic that was suggested by you, our listeners. And today we’re continuing with a famed building beloved by the rich and famous for hundreds of years--and even inspired some pretty big-name artists--but that is most renowned today for being incredibly cursed, even haunted-- today, we’re talking the terrifying Palazzo Dario, on Venice’s Grand Canal. This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.
During the first year of the ArtCurious Podcast, I really wanted to feature Venice, as I discussed at the top of this episode. I eventually ended up talking about a lesser-known creepy locale that has a rather apocryphal story connected to a tragedy supposedly befalling an artist who had connections to Renaissance greats like Titian and Giorgione-- and it had a little love story thrown in there, too, which was fun. But I have to admit that I almost toyed with discussing the Palazzo Dario, also known as Ca’ Dario, all the way back in early 2017. It’s been in the back of my mind ever since, so I’m excited to finally share it with you now-- because in my mind, a haunted palace in Venice just makes this eternally alluring city even more so.
On the surface, there’s nothing particularly haunting or terrifying about the Palazzo Dario-- it looks, in many ways, like a bunch of the marvelous palazzos that line the Grand Canal, the main waterway that winds through Venice like a highway. It’s pretty, actually, all done up in the so-called Venetian Gothic style, a mishmash that combines elements and influences from not only Italy’s Medieval gothic period-- think lots of brick and marble construction, and those pointed archways known as “lancet arches”-- but also smashes them together with characteristics of the architectural styles of both the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires (i.e., modern-day Turkey), like ornamental rooftop crenulation, windows with stone grills, and multi-colored exterior stonework. In considering Venice’s location on the Northern Adriatic Sea and the fact that it was a world center for trade and commerce ever since its earliest days, this confluence of styles actually makes good sense. It’s no wonder that many called Venice the “Crossroads of the World”-- and its eclectic and one-of-a-kind architecture reflected this. And the façade of the Palazzo Dario is an excellent example of this, all color and light, with rows of long arches lined up together, stretching toward the sky. The arches contrast wonderfully with these rounded windows--known as oculi--that are scattered all around the exterior and are echoed in these wonderful circular ornamental designs, called stone patens, which were created (at great expense, no doubt) in a variety of exotic stoners from the Middle East: porphyry, which has a lovely purple hue, green serpentine, and Istrian limestone, which often has a golden or yellowish hue. Combined with red and yellow marble from surrounding Italian city-states and sovereign areas, the Palazzo Dario was a reflection of Venice itself: expensive, beautiful, exotic; a privileged place in the world at large.
And if the Palazzo Dario seemed like a reflection of Venice itself, it’s even more accurate to say that it directly represented the man who gave it his name: Giovanni Dario. What’s really curious is that we actually don’t know a ton about Giovanni Dario, but we know enough that we’re able to set some bare-bones details down on the table. We know that Dario was a merchant, and also held positions as a secretary and notary to the senate of the Venetian Republic, so he had excellent political ties and was most likely well-paid for his enviable postings. At one point in 1484, he was sent as an envoy of the Venetian government to manage the signing of a peace treaty between the Ottomans and the Venetians, who had been embroiled in a brutal war--several actually-- for quite some time, and for his efforts, Dario was apparently rewarded with this prime plot of land on the Grand Canal by the Venetian government, both as a show of their appreciation for his efforts and as a very public celebration of this victory of diplomacy with the Turks. Perhaps it was pride in his achievement that inspired Dario to hire the architect-- long assumed to be the Venetian master Pietro Lombardo, though this has been disputed-- to design a palace that showcased that particular East-Meets-West Venetian Gothic style. Or perhaps it was just the popular architectural style of the day-- or maybe both. But one thing is certain: the building was a glorification of Giovanni Dario, and even bears an inscription on its facade that attests to his importance: “Urbis Genio Ioannes Darius,” Latin for “Giovanni Dario, genius of the city,” or “patron of the city.” The palazzo, then, was Dario, and Dario was his palazzo. (Oh, and remember that inscription, by the way, because we’ll actually be coming back to it shortly.)
But we’re not here today to talk about gorgeous architecture and a long-dead wealthy Venetian, are we? No! We’re here to talk about the dark rumors that have swirled around this stately palace for centuries, ever since the early 16th century, and one that some believe extends even into our own, the 21st. And it appears that the rumors started rather quickly after the death of Giovanni Dario in 1494. When he died, the Palazzo Dario passed into the hands of his daughter, Marietta, and she and her husband Vincenzo Barbaro, moved in, or at least partially did, since they also owned the palazzo that was literally next door. We must note that there’s not a whole lot of detail about the lives of Marietta or Vincenzo, just as there’s not a ton remaining about Marietta’s father, Giovanni, but what we do know is that their marriage didn’t end happily: Vincenzo, a wealthy merchant like his father-in-law, eventually went bankrupt and then was stabbed to death--though the details are spotty, of course. Marietta, distraught over both financial ruin and her husband’s demise, was said to have taken her own life, throwing herself into the Grand Canal and drowning. Such tragedy apparently transferred forward to the next generation, with their son, either named Vincenzo like his father, or Giacomo--again, fuzzy details-- murdered by assassins in Crete.
If it is true--if these three tragic and unnatural deaths did indeed happen to the Dario/Barbaro family, then that’s a truly heavy burden, occurrences that would make it hard for anyone--any familial survivors--to recover from, a grief that surely must have been unbearable and immense. And yet some Venetians began wondering if it wasn’t all a coincidence, but perhaps something more frightening. And that’s when some enterprising Venetians took a second glance at that inscription on the facade of the Palazzo Dario. I’m not entirely sure whose idea it was to determine its anagram, but some potentially really bored person determined that if you scrambled up the letters in “Urbis Genio Ioannes Darius,” then you end up with another rather different Latin phrase: “Sub ruina insidiosa genero,” an ominous statement that roughly translates to “I generate under an insidious ruin,” essentially meaning that ruination--financial, physical, or both-- was doomed to befall any owner or inhabitant of the Palazzo Dario. The Palazzo Dario, many began to whisper, had been cursed from the start--and there was the proof, right there on the front of the building, carved in stone.
Of course the house itself didn’t play along with these stories of curses, or at least not at first. After the death of Marietta and Vincenzo’s son in the early-to-mid-16th century, the palazzo seemed to pass through the hands of various Barbaro family members and… nothing really happened. We basically know nothing about those who lived in the palazzo for nearly three hundred years, nor do we know anything about their deaths or potential ruination, and suffice to say that by this time, all rumors of a supposed Dario curse had mostly been forgotten… but not entirely forgotten. And when the Barbaro family ultimately opted to sell the palazzo in the early 19th century-- allowing the building to leave the family’s hands for the first time since Giovanni Dario had it built in the late 1400s--the supposed curse reared its ugly head again and again, inspiring Venetians to honor it with a new, insidious nickname: “the house that kills.”
The first owner of the palazzo, post-Barbaro family, was a grandiose and wealthy Armenian merchant named Arbit Abdoll whose fortune was made in the jewelry business-- selling extraordinary diamonds and rubies… and sometimes selling some rather convincing cut glass and pretending they were jewels. Abdoll purchased the palazzo after the Barbaro family did a little sprucing up and some renovations, and Abdoll was no doubt thrilled with his new stately home on the Grand Canal. And yet, things apparently took a turn for Abdoll not too long after he purchased Ca’ Dario. His fortune, many say, quickly evaporated, and Abdoll found himself penniless. He sold the palazzo and died shortly after-- and who knows if the jeweler’s extravagant ways, or a poor bet, or any other elements were at hand. For some, any logical explanation didn’t matter. The curse, they said, was back.
The tale of the palazzo’s next owner has been greatly exaggerated, perhaps conflated with details from other purported victims of the curse, and probably acts more as a morality tale for 19th century Italy’s particular bugaboos. Arbit Abdoll sold the Palazzo in 1838 to an English scholar and historian named Rawdon Brown, who had been living in Venice since 1833 to study Italian history and its potential relationship to English history. Here’s where the story gets tricky: the rumors have it that within 4 years of purchasing the palazzo, Brown was in complete financial ruin, like his predecessor; even worse, he was apparently discovered to be gay, which led to society-wide ostracism and, eventually, to a murder-suicide in the palace in 1842, when Brown killed his lover and then himself. The curse! The curse has claimed more financial ruin and more two more lives!
Except this one, for sure, is not true. It’s accurate that Rawdon Brown did indeed find himself in more dire financial straits after purchasing the palazzo than before, simply because he undertook almost a complete overhauling of the interior of the palazzo-- renovating it even more than the Barbaro family had done (and, to be fair, the palazzo had been standing for almost 400 years at that point on Venice’s notoriously unstable silt, so, you know, it probably needed a complete overhaul). That probably cost a really pretty penny. And Brown did end up selling the palazzo four years after he bought it, but most likely did so at a profit due to all those upgrades. And there was no murder-suicide here: Brown remained in Venice, moving to a different palazzo in the early 1850s and he died there, peacefully, in 1883, at the respectable age of 77. And it was also alongside Brown that a major figure in 19th century art history and art criticism, the Englishman John Ruskin, came to admire the Palazzo Dario--a sign of things to come in the remaining years of the 19th century and the early ones of the 20th. Ruskin was one of the most prominent art writers and critics in the Victorian era (and, if I do say so myself, kind of a snack in his younger years). He was fascinated with Venice and its architecture-- particularly the colors of the stones used from the Byzantine era onwards, and he found the Palazzo Dario’s oculi to be particularly splendid. Exacting drawings of the palazzo’s façade survive that speak to Ruskin’s interest, where he wrote of the oculi, quote: “brighter hues were opposed by bands of deeper colour, generally alternate russet and green in the archivolts . . . and by circular disks of green serpentine and porphyry.” And the aesthetic interest in the palazzo only grew as the 19th century progressed into the 20th.
Coming up next: The Palazzo Dario brings inspiration--and some pretty famous works of art-- and, oh yeah, more supposed death and devastation. Stay with us.
Welcome back to ArtCurious.
The Palazzo Dario switched hands a few times as the 20th century approached, with one of its most notable inhabitants being Isabelle Crombez, the Countess de la Blaume-Pluvinel, a Belgian-born aristocrat and writer who was also known to host a salon of great artists and thinkers. After she also committed herself to several major renovations of the palazzo (which included adding chimneys, a staircase, and further stabilization of the marble facade), she hosted a famed French poet, Henri de Régnier, for two years, from 1899-1901. And from all accounts, it was a lovely, peaceful, and productive stay for Régnier. No curse seems to have afflicted him there, nor to have followed him back to France. Instead, it brought him beauty and comfort, a place of solace during his Venetian sojourn.
Even more famously, Ca’ Dario brought artistic inspiration to one of the biggest names in art at the beginning of the century: Claude Monet. In 1908, the 68-year-old father of Impressionism made a visit to Venice, the most serene city and made 37 of his most famous paintings there-- images where he sought to capture the light, the atmosphere, and the colors of a city on water, constantly changing with the tide’s ebb and flow and the setting of the fall sun. And he was taken with the Palazzo Dario-- so much so that he painted it at least four different times, all with that typical Monet mode of working where he came back to the same scene at different times of day in order to capture the differences brought about by lighting and atmospheric changes. He fell in love with Venice and made the palazzo one of his ten painting locales during his trip, setting himself up at the mouth of the Grand Canal across from the palazzo and translating his unique vision onto oil and canvas. “My enthusiasm for Venice has done nothing but grow,” he wrote to a friend at the end of his vacation. And his fascination with painting the Palazzo Dario was a big part of that.
In the almost 100 years between Arbit Abdoll’s supposed financial ruin from the curse and Monet’s loving renditions of its exterior, Ca’ Dario mostly just continued being a building. But the curse was simply lying dormant, some declared, just waiting for its next victim. And according to legend, the next one was Charles Briggs, an American millionaire who purchased the palazzo at some point in the early-to-mid 20th century. And this time there’s another gay-panic story attached, one that I can’t seem to verify, about Briggs being discovered as a homosexual and basically ostracized, forced to leave Italy and relocate to Mexico, where his lover committed suicide, some say, from the shame of the whole experience. It’s reminiscent of the same tales told, incorrectly, about Rawdon Brown, perpetuated time and again online. And it’s a reminder that once you start looking into the rumors about Ca’ Dario, you’ll soon realize a lot of the reported details are just plain wrong-- like the story about Rawdon Brown, which I’ve even found reiterated in Venetian tour websites and in physical guidebooks about the city. And some even add more deaths and disaster to the already-full curse, like one guidebook that listed the death of Henri de Régnier, the poet that lived in the palazzo from 1899-1901, as having died there shortly after moving in, which is patently false-- de Régnier died in Paris in 1936. But it’s proof of something that we’ve spoken about before on the podcast, especially as it pertains to the stories and tall tales about Vincent van Gogh-- that we love to perpetuate these myths because they are simply fun; they entertain us.
Truly, as we’ve seen with de Régnier, Monet, Ruskin, and others, not everyone who has come into contact with Ca’ Dario has had a bad go of it. William Demby, an African-American writer spent part of the late 1940s writing his most famous novel, Beetlecreek, at the palazzo. He noted, quote, “I wrote the novel while I was in foreign cities; I was in Salzburg, in Rome, and suddenly it all came together in a palace in Venice; and the first thing I know is that I had finished a novel.” Unquote. In some ways, the palazzo was a place of inspiration for Demby, the place where his thoughts coalesced and his book--his baby--came into being.
Even though there are a lot of tall tales when it comes to the supposed curse of the Palazzo Dario, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t grains of truth to them, too-- both can coexist. And in the case of several individuals who came into orbit with the Palazzo Dario in the second half of the twentieth century, that’s definitely the case. In 1963 or 1964 (dates seem to vary depending on the account), after the palazzo had sat empty for several years, a famous Italian opera singer named Mario del Monaco began official negotiations to purchase the property. But something awful happened-- on his way to Venice to attend to these real estate matters, he was in a terrible car crash, sustaining severe injuries that some believe may have curtailed his career, if not his life. Legend has it that in the ambulance, as he was being transported away for medical care, the singer shouted to his secretary, quote, “Destroy those papers,” unquote, referring to the purchase agreement for the Palazzo Dario. The sale was canceled.
In comparison to the palazzo’s next owner, some believe that Mario del Monaco actually got off easy. After all, he didn’t end up moving into the palazzo, and he made it out alive. The same cannot be said for Count Filippo Giordano delle Lanze, who died in the palazzo in the 1970s when he was killed by a Croatian sailor named Raul Blasich, who was probably the count’s lover--and then Raul, who fled to London after he killed the count, was murdered there soon after. To many Venetians, it was a sign: the curse was coming back with a vengeance, and the Palazzo Dario would, no doubt, strike again.
The purported tragedies so closely tied to the palazzo were said to have continued with its next owner, the British record producer, and manager of one of my favorite rock bands, The Who: Kit Lambert. Lambert, at the height of his wealth due to The Who’s successes, purchased the palazzo, living there part-time while maintaining another home in London. Friends and associates noted that part of what fascinated Lambert was actually the supposed curse, drawn to the dark, romantic vision of living and owning a house of ill omen. (Not that he necessarily believed in the curse, mind you-- but it is interesting to note that he often suggested that friends stay in a nearby hotel when they visited, just in case). And because he was a) a dude in the rock world, and b) it was the ‘70s, Lambert played a lot of that darkness out in a dual obsession with drugs and with spending money-- both of which would eventually lead him to becoming a ward of the Court of Protection in Britain, which allowed him a small living stipend in exchange for removal of a drug possession charge and potential prison sentences. Financial ruin, some whispered again-- it’s the curse, again-- a whisper that grew ever stronger into a near-scream when Kit Lambert died of a cerebral hemorrhage after a fall down the stairs in 1981. He fell down a stairway in London, mind you, not at the Palazzo Dario, but no matter-- the curse can capture you anywhere, and everywhere.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s, and even into the early 2000s, these trends continued. A Venetian businessman moved in, only to soon fall into financial ruin and to lose a sister to a devastating car crash. Another Italian owner was caught up in a very public financial scandal that ended with his apparent suicide in Milan in 1993. And when Kit Lambert’s old friend, The Who’s bass player, John Entwistle died of a heart attack a week after purportedly renting the Palazzo Dario while on a Venetian vacation in 2002. Never mind that he already had a pre-existing heart condition, an intense smoker, and was using cocaine the night of his death… but even all of that, that was brought about by the curse-- all from just renting the palazzo. So it shouldn’t be a surprise, then, to know that some potential sales of the building have fallen through, possibly because of concerns over the curse. Most famously, none other than director Woody Allen attempted to buy the palazzo before backing out-- and some believe that it was due to the curse that he threw in the towel. Today, the building is privately owned-- some sources say it’s an American corporation of some kind, though it hasn’t been confirmed-- and is typically closed to the public, though the nearby Peggy Guggenheim Collection does occasionally use it for particularly large special exhibitions. And from what I’ve heard, no one seems to have gone bankrupt or lost their lives while art-gazing in and around the palazzo.
When you listen back to this story, it’s helpful to note that since the time of its original owner, Giovanni Dario, only one person that we’ve discussed today actually died within the palace’s walls: Count Filippo Giordano delle Lanze. Everyone else was away from the building when their tragedies befell them, even Marietta, Dario’s daughter, who supposedly drowned in the Grand Canal. And let me remind you again that many of the details about those cursed have been exaggerated, confused, or potentially even just made up. And yet there are many-- and we can count lots of Venetians in this lot--who believe that the curse is true, that Ca’ Dario houses malevolent spirits--perhaps Giovanni Dario’s, perhaps those who had previously been buried on the site in a Templar cemetery from a thousand years ago-- or even that the house itself is a malevolent being, insistent on bringing death and dismay to all who enter. Or it’s all a strange coincidence linked together with the smallest of breadcrumbs to form the semblance of a true story. Whatever is really going on with the Palazzo Dario, the folklore surrounding it seems fitting, somehow, as a legacy of this mysterious and one-of-a-kind city, a reminder that even La Serenissima, the most serene city, as Venice is sometimes called, has its very sharp edges and dark shadows. And I don’t know about you, but that little frisson of fear that accompanied me as I slid past the palazzo on a water taxi one chilly evening-- that’s enough to keep me interested in this beautiful, if strange, Venetian palace. But perhaps I should just keep my interest to myself and enjoy the palazzo’s beautiful facade at a distance.
Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal, with additional writing and research help by Jordan McDonough. Our theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, and our logo is by Dave Rainey at daveraineydesign.com. Our audio production services are provided by Kaboonki, the silliest name in superb podcasts and video. Let them help you too at kaboonki.com. The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. Please visit anchorlightraleigh.com.
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Check back with us in two weeks when we explore the unexpected, slightly odd, and strangely wonderful with potentially cursed art and artifacts.
