Villa Widmann - Riviera del Brenta

Villa Widmann Rezzonico Foscari.
The traveler who in the eighteenth century faced the traditional Tour d'Italie and, aboard the burchio, a typical coastal boat, went up the Brenta from Venice to Padua, could admire, in one of the loops formed by the river, one of the jewels of the late Venetian Baroque, the complex of Villa Widmann Rezzonico Foscari.
Built in the early eighteenth century by the will of the Serimanns, Venetian nobles of Persian origin, the Villa got its current shape only in the middle of the same century, when the Widmann family, after purchasing the property, modernized it adapting it to the French Rococo style. The central body thus became a welcoming home for parties and receptions.
To embellish the main hall in about 1865, two artists were called, then much disputed in the Venetian environment, Giuseppe Angeli (1712-1798), a disciple of Giambattista Piazzetta, and Gerolamo Mengozzi Colonna, Tiepolo's favorite collaborator. However, the attribution of the frescoes is not certain: some scholars believe them to be the work of Francesco Zanchi.
In 1883 the Villa went up for auction and was acquired by Francesco Somazzi. After a few changes of ownership, the Villa returns to the Widmanns, but the last descendant Elisabetta in 1946 gives it to her son Ludovico, who in 1970 sells it to the Costanzo family. Currently the complex is owned by the Metropolitan City of Venice, formerly the Province of Venice.
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