Venice and the Jews 1516-2016
It was
fascinating to realise that when the Ghetto was formed it was just an area
given to the Jewish population of Venice as other areas were given to other
nationalities. The area was then named after the furnaces (geto) which had been
there before. The word has obviously grown to take on darker meaning and things
were not always as easy in the Venetian Ghetto as when it was founded.
There was a
wonderful room of paintings from the time of the founding showing how Jews were
viewed in society. This included three by one of my favourite artists
Carpaccio. I loved his portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan who founded the
Ghetto.
There was also a
great room of sketches and plans of the buildings and a great AV presentation of
a walk through the streets which stopped at the site of the buildings whose
plans you had just been looking at many of which still existed.
I knew very
little about the occupation of Venice by Napoleon except that he pinched a lot
of art but was interested to see that he also burnt the gate of the Ghetto and
liberated the population after a more restrictive period in its history. There
was also a good section looking at the most famous work about the Ghetto “The
Merchant of Venice” featuring different performances and talking about how it
is performed often reflects the thinking of the time.
I thought there
was great used of AV in the show. It all worked which is a miracle and it
really added to the experience. There was just one room where the AV only
seemed to be in Italian and the other explanations in the room were a bit
sketchy. I do want a small moan about putting the labels by the objects. There
were good explanations but these were often at the other end of the room and it
took a bit of working out as to which label applied to which item.
Closes 13
November 2016
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