Almost a century after the first exhibition dedicated to eighteenth-century Venice, entitled Il Settecento Italiano and staged in Venice in 1929 – to which Pietro Accorsi himself made a significant contribution – the Accorsi-Ometto Foundation is pleased to pay homage to the myth of the Serenissima with an exhibition, curated by Laura Facchin and Luca Mana , which intends to tell the life of the lagoon city in the last period of its brilliant history, outlining its society and showing its most fascinating and curious aspects.

The different thematic areas , which develop in the exhibition spaces and along the museum halls, restore the image of Venice through multiple representations: the views created by the great names of the Venetian tradition, from Luca Carlevarijs to Canaletto to Michele Marieschi ; the canvases with mythological and sacred subjects that evoke the "itinerant" masters such as Sebastiano Ricci and Giambattista Tiepolo ; the delicate portraits of Rosalba Carriera and the celebrations of Carnival and the sumptuous feast of the Sensa (Ascension).

The variegated production of Venetian furniture and furnishings is represented not only in the intimate views of interiors, made paradigmatic by the Longhi , but also by the lacquered furniture of the Accorsi-Ometto Museum , by the precious silverware and the refined sculptures by Giovanni Bonazza and Antonio Gai . A table laden with Cozzi porcelain underlines the importance of one of the oldest Venetian manufacturers, founded in 1765.

Furthermore, a reference to Antonio Vivaldi , a symbolic figure of the "golden age" of music in Venice, could not be missing.

In 1797, following the agreements of Campoformio, the millennial history of the Serenissima Republic of San Marco ended. A sense of slow but unstoppable decline clearly transpires in the works of the artists of the second half of the eighteenth century, from Giandomenico Tiepolo to his uncle, Francesco Guardi . But before reaching the end, Venice still offers itself on the international scene in a season of fabulous beauty whose myth is even taken up by Giorgio de Chirico who concludes the exhibition with a surprising coup de théâtre .