Garden complement to art

Gillian Vine explores a Venetian garden designed as a backdrop to a famous art collection.

One of the most popular visitor attractions in Venice is the Peggy Guggenheim art collection, housed in the wealthy American woman’s former home, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, where she lived from 1949 until her death in 1979.

Leaving New York for Paris when she was 21, Guggenheim began buying contemporary art, going on a spending spree at the outbreak of World War 2. Despite being Jewish, she stayed in Paris until just before the German occupation of the city, then sent her art collection to New York, having a friend ship it out of France as "household goods".

In New York, Guggenheim opened a gallery but missing Europe, returned in 1947, this time to Venice, where she bought the 18th century Palazzo Venier dei Leoni for $US60,000 (about $NZ1.4 million today).

Although twice married — to painters Lawrence Vail and Max Ernst — Guggenheim’s first loves were art and her little Llasa Apso dogs, beside which she is buried in the palazzo’s garden.

She left her artworks to her Uncle Solomon R. Guggenheim on the understanding that her collection would remain in her home. Today, paintings by such celebrated artists as Ernst, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol are displayed inside the villa.

Outdoors, sculptures are presented in a natural garden setting, a space known as the Nasher Sculpture Garden and housing a permanent display of part of the collection of Americans Raymond and Nancy Nasher.

One of the few photos of Guggenheim that show the garden is one of her sitting in the self-contained, creeper-draped round gazebo. Behind her is a messy, overgrown courtyard, with a narrow path bisecting long grass. The wall of the palazzo seen in the photo is covered with what appears to be an ornamental grapevine.

Later, the grass was replaced with irregular marble pavers.

To design a garden whose primary purpose was as a backdrop to modern sculptures but which was an aesthetically pleasing place, fell to Venetian architect Giorgio Bellavitis.

In 1983 and 1995 he revamped the garden, taking as his inspiration the garden designs portrayed by cartographer Ludovico Ughi. His work, in his 1729 map of nearby Giudecca Island, was notable for its accurate field studies.

In a 2001 extension, Bellavitis repeated the geometric effects he used previously, this time adding a long diamond of brick, marble and green granite.

The garden was again renovated in 2009-10 by an American company.

Now, height and some shade come from plane, birch, yew, cypress and tall pittosporum, the latter probably P. tobira. Sometimes called Japanese cheesewood, it is a spreading evergreen Asian species that will grow 6m tall and is popular throughout southwest Europe.

The garden’s walls are covered with ivy and o0ther creepers to give a background that does not distract from the sculptures. For the same reason, there is little colour apart from a mauve wisteria over the entrance gate, and of course the birch and plane leaves in autumn.

At ground level, there is a touch more colour in amethyst-flowered Liriope edging a garden, but the overall theme is green, typified by the ferns crowding under trees.

Attractive though it is, I wouldn’t recommend a visit just to see the garden, so worked and reworked that little from Peggy Guggenheim’s era survives, apart from her circular gazebo and chair.

Instead, go to Palazzo Venier dei Leoni to appreciate how the present garden has been planned as a backdrop to the remarkable sculpture and, indoors, enjoy the impressive artwork, the legacy of a fascinating woman.

To get to the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, take a vaporetto to the Academy Bridge stop or stroll along the Grand Canal.