Rialto bridge fish market

One of the obligatory stops for those who visit the city of Venice is surely the Rialto market.

It is in fact the oldest area of the city and home to the city market since 1097.

Here, once upon a time, one could buy any kind of food, but also exotic goods, such as oriental spices and precious fabrics.

The Pescheria is the beating heart of the Rialto market, since fish is the basis of Venetian cuisine.

The Loggia

The Loggia that houses the Rialto fish market seems old but in fact it was built in 1907 in neo-Gothic style by the architect Domenico Rupolo; those who go there to buy fish, or just to take a look at the colorful stalls, usually do not pay particular attention to the capitals of the columns that support the perimeter of the Pescheria Nuova.

In fact, each capital is different and was sculpted by the architect Rupolo from a drawing by the painter Cesare Laurenti (his name is engraved on the capital).

In the center there are four heads representing the authors of the work (in fact we also find Rupolo’s signature); in one of the side columns are carved some boats with large baskets called vieri, used to keep the fish fresh in the water, in the other capitals there are several sea creatures, such as crabs, lobsters, fish, octopus, scallops, bovoli, crabs and seahorses.

Floral and maritime emblems

We see in fact floral and maritime emblems (such as the compass rose) but also esoteric symbols (sun, moon, stars), typical of the early ‘900, a decidedly symbolist era.

The visit to the Rialto Market is included in the itinerary of two private thematic itineraries of great charm, the Casanova Tour and Venezia Libertina…

Reason? Once upon a time, early in the morning, after the transgressive nights of Carnival, the young Venetians used to gather among the stalls of the Rialto market…

Cesare Laurenti Born in Mesola in 1854, he trained in Padua.

From 1876 he was in Florence where he attended the Academy and in 1878 he moved to Naples to meet Domenico Morelli, one of the greatest innovators of Italian painting in the 1800s. The relationship between the two artists – which certainly left a decisive imprint on Laurent’s artistic development – is still little known.

Returned to Padua, soon after he moved to Venice, where he devoted himself initially to a production of genre, in the manner of Giacomo Favretto, then very fashionable in the city, and then gradually move to literary and mythological references, sometimes treated with a superficiality only apparent. In 1891 he won a prize at the Milan Triennale with The Fates.

From this moment the works are enriched with psychological introspection, metaphorical allusions, and attention shifts decisively towards the symbolist poetics.

Fioritura Nova

It is the time of some of his most important paintings, such as Fioritura Nova (exposed in the hall of Ca ‘Pesaro), presented at various editions of the Venetian Biennale, which is, since its foundation (1895) one of the main animators, and that will dedicate an important personal room in 1907.

At the beginning of the century Laurenti engages in a thoughtful reconsideration of the great classical Venetian and Italian tradition, this attention is not foreign to the methodical technical and pictorial research, which will lead to the creation of the so-called “tempera Laurenti”, a preparation of which to date has not reconstructed the recipe.

In this phase he also realizes great decorative cycles, such as the ceramic frieze for the Hall of the modern portrait at the Biennale of 1903, and the frescoes in two dining rooms of the Albergo allo Storione in Padua in 1905.

Pescheria di Rialto

This ideal of public art is sublimated in the realization of the Pescheria di Rialto, inaugurated in 1908. The building, conceived in the architectural part with Domenico Rupolo (1861-1945), stands as a true manifesto of the synthesis between major and applied arts.

The majestic Monument to Dante Alighieri, which Laurenti wanted to build on Monte Mario in Rome, will remain only on paper; the project, conceived and presented in 1911, on the occasion of the International Exhibition of Rome, committed him until his last days.

The artist died on November 8, 1936.