In 2023, Save Venice spearheaded the successful pilot program of conservation fieldwork by the IVBC Restoration School to restore 18th-century stucco and frescoes at Venice’s Music Conservatory in Palazzo Pisani.

Save Venice continues its support by funding a 2024 full-year program of stucco and marmorino conservation in three rooms that house the Music Conservatory’s museum of musical instruments and the adjacent staircase. These rooms  are located in the mezzanine level of the south-east wing of Palazzo Pisani.

Save Venice is seeking a sponsor for this project.

*Published sponsorship costs are subject to change due to conservation plan modifications and fluctuations in exchange rates.

Please contact kim@savevenice.org today for more information and the latest cost estimates.

The three rooms that today house the Museum of Musical Instruments of Venice’s Music Conservatory were once used as the apartment of Alvise and Francesco Pisani’s mother, who resided in the palazzo in the late 18th century while her sons were serving as ambassadors abroad.

At the beginning of the 19th century these rooms were used as the headquarters of the Deputazione della Storia Patria, and by the 1940s became classrooms of the Conservatory.

The elaborate stucco decoration likely dates to around 1775 and could possibly be the work of notable plasterers Giuseppe Ferrari and Francesco and Zuanne Re. The first room off of the staircase, called the “Dressing Room of Apollo,” boasts the most lavish decoration of the four rooms.

Throughout 2024, conservators from Venice’s IVBC restoration school are leading the students and recent graduates in the fieldwork treatment of the stuccowork and marmorino decoration in the four rooms and adjacent staircase. They are addressing several condition problems including removing disfiguring heavy overpainting and unsuitable materials applied during previous interventions, verifying the structural stability of the decoration, stabilizing and integrating cracks, removing surface dirt and grime, and integrating small decorative losses.