The Museum of Palazzo Grimani in Santa Maria Formosa confirms its leading role in the Venetian cultural scene with a new project, the result of the collaboration between the Veneto Museums Regional Directorate and the Venetian Heritage foundation. On 19 May the rearrangement of the Doge's Room will be presented , one of the most spectacular and evocative rooms of the building which will return to its Renaissance splendor with the relocation of the Greek and Roman statuary part of the Grimani collection .

The intervention is part of a strategy of enhancement and promotion of the building and its history and in continuity with the rearrangement of the Tribune of Patriarch Giovanni Grimani, inaugurated in May 2019 with the exhibition DOMUS GRIMANI 1594-2019 .

The Doge's Room was created at the same time as the extension works of the building completed in 1568 and commissioned by Giovanni Grimani , patriarch of Aquileia, following an initial intervention on the building carried out together with his brother Vettore. This space, an ideal counterpart to the Tribuna and probably also designed by Giovanni himself, was intended to celebrate the figure of Antonio Grimani , a skilled spice merchant and first doge of the family . Embellished with ancient and precious marbles such as yellow alabaster, green serpentine and red porphyry - coming from the eastern Mediterranean from which the ancestor drew his fortune as a spice and military trader - the space was conceived as a spectacular scenography in which exhibit part of the classical sculptures from the family collection.

Through a careful study of historical sources - including the inventory of Giovanni Grimani's assets, historical descriptions of the time and late 19th century photographs recently discovered in the library of the National Gallery in Washington - the curators Daniele Ferrara , director of the Regional Directorate for Museums Veneto and Toto Bergamo Rossi , director of Venetian Heritage , were able to relocate twenty sculptures inside the room, including the Dionysus group leaning on a satyr from the imperial Roman era in the niche of the front wall. Eleven other sculptures were instead placed in the adjoining rooms: six in the vestibule of the chapel , one in the Camerino di Callisto and four in the Sala di Psyche .