LUXURIOUS PALAZZINA / art foundation
Further historical details
Palazzo Dona' (Ca' Dona' Brusa' in Venetian) is a lesson in the architectural history of Venice. It has features that range from Byzantine, through early and late Gothic and include the Renaissance.
A curious decoration of the marble cornice of the entrance depicts a hunter and his dogs chasing rabbits and antelopes. It is late Byzantine, Dona's oldest feature which historians place in the last half of the 14th century.
The cortile is an extensively documented example of Early Gothic. Its most dramatic feature is the quadrafora (four-light "windows") on the piano nobile. Its marble stairway, its pozzo, and its great supporting columns are all characteristic of Venetian architecture in the early 15th century.
Inside, the gallery's Gothic ceiling is of a type found only in the Ducal Palace. The floor in the gallery and salone affirm Dona's age. They are not terrazzo, but pastellone, an early, earthier flooring material now rare in Venice. There is a gorgeous Renaissance ceiling in the salone.
Palazzo Dona' has been designated an historic monument. It is listed in Giulio Lorenzetti's comprehensive Venice and its Lagoons. It has a significant place in Eduardo Arslan's definitive Gothic Architecture in Venice, and in Paolo Maretto's L'Edilizia Gotica Veneziana. If you look closely, you can find Dona' on Jacabo de Barari's 1500 etching when it faced a now filled-in canal and a bridge was needed to reach the entry. It is cataloged in the definitive book on Venetian cortiles. In Giuseppe Tassini's Alcuni Palazzi, published in 1879, he quotes a letter describing a wedding at Palazzo Dona' in June, 1507.