The story
When Count Giovanni Querini Stampalia, the last of an old Venetian family, died in 1869, he left the family palace beside the church of Santa Maria Formosa to a foundation, with one unusual condition. Its library and reading room were to stay open on all the days and hours when public libraries were closed, and in the evening especially, for the convenience of scholars. The library still keeps long hours, and above it the family's rooms are kept as a house museum.
The picture people come for is Giovanni Bellini's Presentation in the Temple, painted around 1470. It repeats, with two extra figures, a composition by his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna that is now in Berlin, and its Christ child stands stiffly upright, bound tight in swaddling bands. Around it are the furnished rooms of an 18th-century patrician house, about 30 small scenes by Pietro Longhi of Venetian salons and social life, Gabriel Bella's paintings of the city's festivals and ceremonies, and Tiepolo's portrait of the procurator Daniele Dolfin. Since 2018 another floor has shown pictures deposited by the Intesa Sanpaolo bank, including a large sketch for Tintoretto's Paradise in the Doge's Palace, now generally credited to his son Domenico.
On the ground floor, between 1959 and 1963, the architect Carlo Scarpa remade the entrance and the garden in stone, concrete and brass, shaping the rooms so that the lagoon's high tides can wash in around raised walkways.
