Face Of The Lion

Title

Face Of The Lion

Artist

Mark J Dunn

Medium

Photograph - Photographs

Description

DescriptionTELIER / WORKSHOP IN VENICE A DYNASTY OF MARBLE MASTERS
Venice is the city of stone for excellence: marble, an elegant and fascinating material, is everywhere. Always used to embellish, but also to build, it has been chosen by all the architects who have worked for the Serenissima during the past centuries. It is natural, therefore, that a workshop for sculpturing marble could not find a better position than in the Cannaregio quarter and in the courtyard of one of the most charming gothic palaces in Venice. This story begins in about 1900, when Romeo Dall'Era, teacher of sculpture, just graduated from the Institute of Arts, decided to open the first Stone Art Workshop in the garden of a little palace, which was already a marble-yard.
Dall'Era immediately made himself popular with the Venetian aristocracy and had the first orders from these noble families. They were mostly restorations inside palaces and churches, then these restorations gradually became real reconstructions. The floor of Salute Church was done just as those of San Pantalon and Frari Church. In the Doges Palace, a jewel of inlaid works and sculptures of different stones, Dall'Era began by doing small works of restoration and since then his craftsmen have never stopped working there. In the Dario Palace, the bathrooms have been redone with colored marbles recalling the style of the building and the hand of the master and of his craftsmen is still evident today.
Gabriele D'Annunzio once ordered from him a bed carved on white marble: its bedstead resembling antique lace. In the '60s the name of the workshop - we are already in the second generation with Bruno Dall'Era, Romeo's son, as head craftsmen - crossed the borders of Veneto and Italy. They received orders from Naples, Milan, Rome, Florence, Vienna and the United States of America. The writer Freya Stark, one of the first to visit the new workshop in Cannaregio, was enchanted by these works and for her house in Asolo had three bathrooms made, all inlaid with colored Greek marbles and enriched with allegorical decorations. Nowadays the workshop is in the hands of Giancarlo Comelato and his sons. Since he was a young boy, Giancarlo has been the most diligent apprentice and now, under the careful supervision of his master, he directs the works. "We are among the last surviving craftsmen to sculpture stone". Dall'Era explains "we follow the academical designs, those of the Venetian monuments... Our clients request the same works as ever: fireplaces, wells (vere), basins, columns, tables, portals. All these works are timeless, they never go out of fashion". He ends saying: "Marble is the only material, which from classical antiquity till today, has conserved all its poetry".
Giovanna Wurmbrand 


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January 12th, 2018

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