Eleonora Duse in Venice: the Fortuny Museum and other lagoon locations

ART AND LOCATIONS: CINEMA IN DETAIL

Pietro Marcello’s Duse recounts the final years of the great Italian stage actress Eleonora Duse who moved to Venice in 1894 and considered it home until her death on April 21, 1924 in Pittsburgh from pneumonia contracted on a tour of the US.  Most of the film is set in Venice, although sequences were filmed in Rome (the former Hospital Carlo Forlanini, Palazzo dell'Aeronautica, Palazzo Orsini Taverna); in areas outside the capital (Mandela; Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati, whose ogre mask is very similar to that of Bomarzo; Tivoli - Piazza del Comune and Piazza del Governo; Sasso in Cerveteri), and in Viterbo (the San Pellegrino neighborhood, between the Teatro dell'Unione and the square outside).

The Fortuny Museum

The Fortuny Museum is undoubtedly the most evocative location of the many lagoon sites used in the film.  The ancient exteriors of Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, built in the 15th century by the Pesaro family who later moved to Ca' Pesaro, with its oriental-style Gothic mullioned windows, are featured, but it is the interior that is most used by set designer, Gaspare De Pascali. The association of the place with Eleonora Duse (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) is no coincidence, given that the palace was home to Mariano Fortuny, the Spanish painter, fashion designer, and set designer who worked for Duse during her years in Venice, from 1889. His widow Henriette Negrin, also a fashion designer, continued living at Palazzo Pesaro after his death (1949), donating it to the Municipality of Venice in 1956, with the specification that it was to be "used in perpetuity as a cultural centre related to art; The central hall on the first floor must retain the characteristics of Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo's favorite studio, retaining the works, furniture, and objects housed there; the property must be renamed Palazzo Pesaro Fortuny”. The museum dedicated to the Granada-born artist was inaugurated in 1975.

In the many-windowed room on the raised first floor where Eleonora Duse has her fittings, the camera focuses on a key piece in the museum: a statue of Antinous, a patinated gesso copy of the 2nd century AD masterpiece found at Hadrian's Villa in the early 1700s. The original passed from the Albani family to Pope Clement XII Corsini whereupon it entered the collection of the Capitoline Museums in 1733, where it was restored by Pietro Bracci, one of the sculptors who worked on the Trevi Fountain.

The film also features the museum's splendid winter garden which Mariano Fortuny (Marcello Mazzarella) worked on from 1915 to the 1940s, creating an "enchanted garden" where approx. 140 sqm of allegorical figures, satyrs, exotic animals, and lush vegetation were painted onto paper glued to supports fixed to the walls.

The film shows Eleonora Duse in these rooms, conferring with Mariano Fortuny, who designed her costumes. He created, among other things, the legendary Delphos, a pleated silk tunic that freed women from corsets, patented in 1909.  Further reinforcing the close connection with the years depicted in Pietro Marcello's film, here he designed the model for the Teatro delle Feste in 1910 with French architect Lucien Hesse and Gabriele d'Annunzio (Fausto Russo Alesi).

The theatres, churches, and cemetery of Venice

Other featured landmarks in the city obviously include Venice’s theatres: the Goldoni and, naturally, La Fenice in Campo San Fantin, recognizable by the golden lion of Saint Mark on its royal box. Today a key characteristic of the interior, the lion was not a part of the original decoration. When the theatre was built (1789 – 1792) there was not even a stage which was added in 1808 for the Emperor of Austria and rebuilt after the first fire of 1836.  Considered a symbol of the invader, the stage was demolished after the 1848 uprisings, but was restored the following year. With the proclamation of the Republic of Italy on June 18, 1946, the imperial coat of arms was replaced by St. Mark the Evangelist’s lion, the symbol of the city of Venice.  After the fire of 1996, the entire theatre was rebuilt following the lines of recreating "as it was, where it was".

Many other Venetian palaces, squares, and churches make appearances: Palazzo Contarini Polignac in Dorsoduro, Campo San Beneto and Campo Santa Giustina, the Fondaco Bridge and a wide shot of the Grand Canal that shows the great Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute, the Baroque church commissioned from Baldassarre Longhena to fulfil a votive pledge following the plague of 1630-1631, completed in 1687.  A beautiful sequence of Eleonora Duse and her Austro-Hungarian assistant, Désirée Von Wertheimstein (Fanni Wrochna) walking through a Venetian calle has in the background a niche with the statue of Saint Matthew and the Angel by Paolo and Giuseppe Groppelli, created for the 18th-century façade of Santa Maria Assunta, better known as the Jesuit church.

Eleonora and guests are seen several times at a table in Palazzo Donà delle Rose on Fondamenta Nuove; the camera pans out to sea and the island of San Michele, which separates that side of Venice from Murano. The brick walls with triple lancet windows and marble mouldings seen are those of the cemetery of San Michele, created following Napoleon's Edict of Saint-Cloud (1804) which required cities to establish burial areas far from residential areas for reasons of public health. What was then known as the island of San Cristoforo della Pace was chosen for this purpose in 1807 and the cemetery design entrusted to architect Gianantonio Selva.

Eleonora Duse's tomb, however, is in the cemetery of Asolo (Treviso) as she wished, having lived there from 1920 to 1922.

• All the locations in Duse.