Over the centuries, numerous artistic testimonies have celebrated the Riviera del Brenta.
It was in 1667 that Giovanni Sagredo, procurator of St. Mark’s and ambassador of the Venetian Republic, published “L’Arcadia in Brenta”, telling of a merry band of Venetian nobles who boarded a burchiello to spend a week among the villas, gardens, fishponds and pleasant places of that golden arcadia that is the Riviera del Brenta.
The Riviera del Brenta is “one of the most beautiful holiday resorts in Italy”, wrote Carlo Goldoni in 1749, who set his “Arcadia in Brenta” there, an opera buffa, with music by Baldassarre Galuppi, which tells of the Venetian nobility and rich bourgeoisie and their yearning for a holiday on dry land. Let us remember the great engravers such as Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650-1718), a cartographer and encyclopaedist, famous throughout Europe, who in 1709 published “La Brenta, quasi borgo della città di Venezia, luogo di delizie de” veneti patrizi, delineata e descritta.”
Johann Christoph Volkamer (1644-1720), an enterprising merchant and botanist from Nuremberg with a special interest in the world of citrus fruits, published the ‘Continuation der Nürbergischen Hesperidum’ in 1714, presenting landscapes and villas of north-eastern Italy, including the Riviera del Brenta.
Giovanni Francesco Costa (1711-1772), a famous Venetian architect, set painter and engraver, published a collection of engravings of landscapes and villas of the Riviera del Brenta in 1750 under the title ‘Delle delicie del fiume Brenta espresse ne palazzi e casini situati sopra le sue sponde dalla sboccatura nella laguna di Venezia fino alla città di Padova’.
How can we fail to recall the great Venetian vedutisti of the 18th century such as Canaletto, Guardi, and Cimaroli, as well as excellent painters such as Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo or artists of the Arcadian school such as Giuseppe Zais. The views and picturesque landscapes of the Riviera del Brenta, its lush nature and complex and varied architecture cannot fail to impress and fascinate artists; each villa is different from the others, stealing one’s gaze and diverting one’s thoughts. It is spontaneous to fantasise about other times, customs and habits, another dimension that we find in the evocative works of art that have come down to us.
