Villa Contarini dei Leoni, overlooking the Naviglio del Brenta in Mira, was built in 1558,” Marco Dori, Mayor of Mira, tells us, ”on the commission of Francesco Contarini, procurator of San Marco. The complex includes, in addition to the Villa, the barchessa, now used as a theater, the oratory and a large garden. In 1745, the 16th-century building was then owned by the Pisani family, Giambattista Tiepolo was commissioned to paint a cycle of frescoes to embellish the villa’s entrance hall. Giambattista, together with his quadraturist Gerolamo Mengozzi Colonna, a specialist in designing and creating illusionistic frames for the scenes, tried his hand at a subject that was both historical and celebratory: the visit to the villa of Henry III of Valois in 1574, on his return journey from Poland, where his mother Catherine de Medici had imposed him on the throne just five months earlier, to France, to assume the French crown as successor to his brother Charles IX, who had died prematurely.
Unfortunately, Tiepolo’s cycle of frescoes, which was sold to the French collectors Edouard Andrè and Nélie Jacquemart, was torn up and transported to Paris in 1893. But today, exceptionally, thanks to the work of the municipal administration, the splendid cycle of Tiepolo frescoes, returned to the Villa in 2018, can once again be admired. Thanks to an agreement with the Jacquemart-Andrè Museum in Paris,” Dori continued, ”and to a special technique based on the digital transfer of the image onto a material surface, a patent of a Paduan company, the fresco has reappeared where it had been removed.
In the villa, as a reminder of the splendor of the eighteenth century, the framing of the doors and the Venetian-style floor remain; also notable is a sixteenth-century washbasin of red Verona marble on the upper floors. The villa, with its newly adorned walls and frescoes, can now be visited by appointment.
The Municipality of Mira has entrusted ARtGlass s.r.l. of Monza with the creation of an Augmented Reality tour to discover the Villa, in which visitors will learn about the history and environment of the municipal area, the first landlord, Federigo Contarini, who had the Villa built in 1557 as his home. The highlight of the visit is the Augmented Reality pictorial analysis of the copy of Giambattista Tiepolo’s great fresco.
