Venice - Italy - page 319

but it should give you some sense of the stylistic and creative developments
between the late 1400s and early 1500s. Titian's Assumption of the Virgin over the
main altar, completed in 1518, makes such revolutionary use of color and style
that the church initially rejected it. Ironically, it was Titian's innovative use of bril-
liant, dramatic colors (in contrast to Tintoretto's more somber tones) that made
him the city's darling, and the Frari now houses an immense neoclassical monu-
ment in his honor; you'll find it in the nave, across from the bizarre pyramidal
monument honoring the sculptor Antonio Canova.
Completely upstaged by the Frari is the under-visited San Polo Church on the
campo of the same name. It may be smaller and less famous, but it includes two
paintings by Tintoretto, The Virgin and the Saints and The Last Supper. The
church itself hearkens back to the 9th century, but was heavily reworked in the
Gothic style during the 14th and 15th centuries. It has a somewhat unusual
atmosphere with some odd decorative choices, like a Madonna and Child adorned
with a set of metal thorns.
Somewhere along the border between San Polo and Dorsoduro is Campo S.
Pantalon, the site of the terribly overlooked San Pantaleone Church (free admis-
sion; daily 4pm-6pm), which has, in my opinion, one of the most beautifully fres-
coed ceilings in Venice, depicting the martyrdom of San Pantaleone. Above your
head, angels seem to disappear into the receding sky in an inspired manipulation
of perspective that will leave you breathless.
ATTRACTIONS IN DORSODURO
Dorsoduro is filled with art galleries where you can buy originals and prints by
contemporary artists, but for lovers of modern art, there's nothing to beat a visit
to the world-class Collezione Peggy Guggenheim

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(Calle San Cristoforo,
Dorsoduro 701; % 041-2405411; www.guggenheim-venice.it; € 10; Wed-Mon
10am-6pm). This—one of the world's finest private art collections—is housed in
the unfinished one-story Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, which Peggy Guggenheim pur-
chased in 1948. You enter Peggy's home by way of the Nasher Sculpture Garden,
which includes works by Ernst, Giacometti, Henry Moore, and Jean Arp. It's here
that the patron's ashes are interred along with the many dogs she owned. Her
museum surveys the major art movements of the 20th century; there are over 300
pieces in the permanent collection alone.
Introduced to modern art by Marcel Duchamp (whose work is on display
here), Ms. Guggenheim at one stage set out to buy one artwork every day.
Determined to protect and nurture the work of her contemporaries, she gathered
a major collection. She poured energy (and money) into artists she believed in,
collecting some of them as lovers, or even—in the case of Max Ernst—as a
husband.
The collection includes groundbreaking works by international superstars: In
the Surrealist Room, Dalí's contemplation of his own sexual awakening, evidently
out of his anxiety resulting from fear of castration by his father (Birth of Liquid
Desires) hangs next to Joan Miró's somber, hallucinatory Seated Woman II. René
Magritte's famous simultaneous evocation of night and day in Empire of Light also
shares the space. And so it goes . . . A house full of Ernst, Dalí, Miró, Picasso,
Constantin Brancusi, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, and other
innovators of modern art, laid out with a deep respect for the effect the different