The unfinished palazzo Life, love and art in Venice : the stories of Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim

BECAUSE THE CITY OF Venice has more history than real estate, many of its buildings are crammed with unrelated lore. The complex known as Ca' Mocenigo is said, for example, to be haunted by the 16th-century phiiosopher Giordano Bruno, whose exasperated host delivered him to the Inquisition. But he has company from subsequent eras: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu stayed there; so did Lord Byron. Antonio Foscarini paid a nocturnal visit that got him hanged when he was accused of spying, although he was only having an affair. And the love letters in Andrea di Robilant's tale of a clandestine 18th-century romance, "A Venetian Affair," were discovered there. This sort of gossipy crowding continued into the modern era in the Ca' Venier dei Lioni. Now a museum, it's emblazoned with the name of its founder, Peggy Guggenheim, who placed outside it a statue of a horseman with a conspicuous phallus (detachable in the event of ecclesiastical visits). But she is only the third of its rich and raunchy 20th-century doyennes. "The Unfinished Palazzo: Life, Love and Art in Venice," by Judith Mackrell, tells the stories of these notoriously eccentric women: the Marchesa Luisa Casati, from Milan, a champion exhibitionist who considered her life (and especially her person) to be a work of art; Doris, Lady Castlerosse, an Englishwoman whose lovers included both Winston Churchill and his son, Randolph; and finally Guggenheim, the American art patron who bequeathed the mansion to her family's foundation as a museum of modern art. The 18th-century building is itself eccentric. It is nicknamed Ca' Nonfinito, "the unfinished house," because only the ground floor was built before the money ran out. A wooden model of the enormous structure it would have been, to the annoyance of its Ca' Grande neighbors across the canal, can be seen in Venice's Correr Museum. Being incomplete, the house wasn't subject to preservation restrictions that would have inhibited the creativity of these three aggressive aesthetes. The marchesa, who spent summers there early in the last century, fitted it up with eerie Gothic ostentation and populated it with black servants painted gold, dyed pastel birds, creepy wax mannequins and an enormous live cobra that she wore as a stole. In the late 1930s, the slick blonde Lady Castlerosse substituted Art Deco ostentation and installed bathrooms. After Guggenheim bought the place in 1948, she turned some of the bathrooms into galleries. Their life stories are just as flashy, a kaleidoscope of bad marriages, bad divorces, Fortuny dresses, outlandish costume parties, fashionable portraits, excessive champagne, famous lovers, pickup lovers, alienated children and overlapping celebrity acquaintances. Yes, it's salacious, but it's also somewhat repetitive. Strangely, there's little sense of Venice in this book, outside of the house. Partly this is because these three spent so much time elsewhere and when they were in residence they seem to have had no more connection to the living city than the day-trippers who describe Venice as a stage set. When they ventured outdoors, it was to display themselves to a startled public, the marchesa with her cheetah on a leash (and rumored to be naked under her fur coat), Guggenheim in her fancy gondola and weird sunglasses. The guests at those lavish parties were mostly imported. Nor does Venice receive careful attention from the author. After an opening scene in 1910, with "the Accademia Bridge arcing over the canal," she makes the bizarre claim that there was "a period when Venice used West African slaves as gondoliers." The current arched wooden Accademia bridge replaced a flat steel one in 1933, and although there were instances of slavery after Venice legally abolished it in 1381, those slaves were usually from the Slavic territories (hence the word "schiavo" for slave, from which "ciao" was derived as the old conventional signoff, "I am your slave"). An implied theme is that in more enlightened times these women might have had solid accomplishments, as indeed Guggenheim eventually did. Perhaps the marchesa, whose blackened eyes, bejeweled costumes and silent stance mesmerize the fashion world to this day, might have her own label, not just one named for her. Perhaps Lady Castlerosse might have been something other than a society courtesan. But Mackrell's documentation of their relentless self-absorption and unfiltered vanity argues against it. Judith martin is the author of "No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice" and the Miss Manners syndicated column and books.

Venice's top attractions include the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, a museum of modern art housed in a palazzo on the Grand Canal. The palazzo dates from the eighteenth century, though it was left unfinished and deteriorating until the twentieth century, when three independent, modern women each called it home. Mackrell (Flappers, 2014) tells their stories. Luisa Casati, an early twentieth-century aesthete who could often be seen riding Venice's gondolas with her pet cheetah, converted the palace ruins into a spectacle of exoticism and eccentricity. Doris Castlerosse, a sexually liberated Brit, revamped it as a site of modern comforts suitable for hosting international socialites on the eve of WWII. And Peggy Guggenheim retreated there to be alone with her art in the 1950s. Mackrell writes each woman's biography, emphasizing, in particular, their sexual adventures. With tales of Casati inspiring the Futurists, Noël Coward basing Private Lives on Castlerosse's unhappy marriage, and Jackson Pollock's dependence on a monthly stipend from Guggenheim, Mackrell delivers a fresh history of twentieth-century Venetian cultural life with women at the fore.--Taft, Maggie Copyright 2017 Booklist

Venice's Palazzo Venier, an incomplete, neglected structure built in the mid-1700s, reflected the rise and fall of its namesake family. In the 20th century, three remarkable women resided there. Mackrell (Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation) explores their eventful lives, beginning early in the century with the highly eccentric Marchesa -Luisa -Casati, a self-proclaimed living work of art whose extravagant parties at the palazzo were notorious. Lady -Doris -Castlerosse followed in the 1930s, a seductive salonniere who attracted famous names in the arts, entertainment, and royal society. Finally, Mackrell introduces American heiress Peggy Guggenheim, who purchased the Venier after World War II, reworking it into a home for her modern art collection that evolved into a museum. The women differed in many ways, but Mackrell points out their similarities in motivation, independence, daring unconventionality, and historic roles in Venice and social culture. Her astute commentary is particularly illuminating, enlarging the reader's understanding of these individuals and the larger framework of their worlds. VERDICT This work skillfully weaves historical details into absorbing biographical profiles while also capturing the charm of Venice. Well-chosen photographs and comprehensive notes and bibliography enhance the volume.-Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Guardian dance critic Mackrell (Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation, 2014, etc.) connects the lives of three unique 20th-century women.These exceptional womenLuisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse, and Peggy Guggenheimfound a freedom in Venice that was not available elsewhere in Europe or America. The city was welcoming to all sorts of strange and wonderful people. The construction of the Palazzo Venier began in the mid-18th century as a tribute to a powerful Venetian family, but financial difficulties and failure to produce an heir left a building only one story high and two rooms deephence, unfinished. Casati found the near ruin and saw it as a place of poetic mystery. She rented it in 1910 and, leaving the exterior derelict-looking, transformed the interior and garden into a showplace for her soirees and a home for her pets, which included a boa constrictor and cheetah, among others. She was always on show, daring but superficial. The author suggests that Casati may have had Asperger's syndrome, explaining her idiosyncratic behavior, but she lived the aesthetic life, making her life a work of art to cover her inability to express herself. It was Casati who truly brought the palazzo to life; she had a great deal of money, which she spent easily. Not so her successor Castlerosse, who went from a shopgirl in London to a professional mistress. Her connection to the palazzo is relatively minor compared to Casati's; Castlerosse's friend bought it for her in 1938 and hosted only one ball before World War II interfered. Guggenheim is the most intriguing character in the narrative, which occasionally falls victim to bloat. Her love of Venice brought her to the palazzo in 1948 to house her modern art collection, making it one of the most-visited attractions in Venice. The book is well-written, but the sexual escapades and personality disorders of the principals take so much space that it degenerates into a gossipy tell-all. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.