World-class art in Venice

A one-stop-shop of Venetian painting, the Accademia Gallery is to Venice what the Uffizi is to Florence and one of Italy’s foremost repositories of art.

From the glittering Byzantine-style devotional works to Carpaccio’s scenes of Venetian life, complete with lissom gondoliers and little white dogs and Tintoretto’s magnificent portrayal of the Transport of the Body of Saint Mark, it is not only a dazzling collection of masterpieces but also a voyage through the history of Venice itself.

The collection was made possible by Napoleon, who closed many Venetian churches and convents, moving their artworks here not only for storage but also to be used by students for study.

Venice’s scuole (schools) were established from the 13th century by the patrician class, partly as religious and charitable institutions, partly as guilds and confraternities, that had members from all walks of society.

By the 15th century, there were some 400 minor scuole and six more important, powerful ‘Scuole Grandi’ which commissioned the great artists of the day to beautify their headquarters. Carpaccio, for example, decorated San Giorgio agli Schiavoni and Tintoretto San Rocco.

Of all Venice’s many churches, the huge, barn-like Frari is one of the most art-packed. The Franciscans started on the present Gothic church in 1338 and finished in 1469; it boasts the second-highest bell tower in the city and a severe exterior, but once inside, the quality of the art is extraordinary.

The assault begins as you go in when your eyes are drawn immediately to the High Alter and Titian’s vivid, soaring Assumption. Other works by Titian to look out for include his Madonna di Ca’ Pesaro (1519).

The Sacristy contains one of Giovanni Bellini’s greatest paintings, the Madonna and Child with Saints. To the left of the high alter is the fabulous Reniassance tomb of Doge Niccolò Tron (1473) by Antonio Rizzo.

Way off-piste in northern Cannaregio, Madonna ‘of the Garden’ (1399-1473) is stuffed with paintings by the great Venetian master who is also buried here along with his son and daughter. A highlight is his beautiful painting of St. Agnes in the Contarini Chapel.

Magnificently located at the entrance to the Grand Canal, this vast pale – and unique – church was built in honour of St. Mary of Health in thanks for deliverance from the plague of 1630-31. The best artworks are in the Sacristy, most notably Tintoretto’s Marriage at Cana.

The little-visited Palazzo Grimani is one of the city’s great Renaissance palazzos, now a museum housing an extraordinary collection of classical sculptures, stuccoes, elaborate frescoes and paintings by Hieronymus Bosch.

The unfinished, one-storey Palazzo Venier dei Leoni was the home of eccentric American millionairess Peggy Guggenheim and today still houses her extraordinary collection of modern art.

Guggenheim brought her collection of mainly surrealist and modernist works to Venice in 1949 purchasing the charming Grand Canal-side palazzo to house it and herself. She died here in 1979 aged 81.

From Picasso to Pollock, Brancusi to Max Ernst, Guggenheim’s brilliantly unfailing eye picked out the best of the 20th-century avant garde; this collection gives the city a modernist stamp it would otherwise have lacked.

Gazing across the Grand Canal, with the rambling sculpture garden overlooked by the café, there are few more alluring spots in Venice.

Japanese superstar architect Tadao Ando was brought in to convert Venice’s 17th-century customs house on the tip of Dorsoduro and 18th-century Palazzo Grassi into stunning exhibition spaces to house French billionaire businessman Francois Pinault’s vast contemporary art collection.

La Biennale transforms Venice annually into a surreal blend of ancient-and-contemporary culture unrivalled anywhere else in the world; it attracts giants of the international art world and vast numbers of visitors. The original Biennale (established in 1895) focused on art and is still held in odd years, but in 1980 an architecture equivalent was added in even years.

The annual bonanza divides into two main sections: individual countries have pavilions in the Giardini (Public Gardens) while artists and architects chosen by a curator exhibit within the magnificent spaces of the old Arsenale. The result is a pop-up museum of painting, installation, sculpture, film, new media and architecture that spreads its tentacles across palaces and churches across the city.