The question of the date of the Casa Dario and the Casa Trevisan was deferred until I could obtain from my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown,* to whom the palace once belonged, some more distinct data respecting this subject than I possessed myself.

Speaking first of the Casa Dario, he says:

Fontana dates it from about the year 1450 and considers it the earliest specimen of the architecture founded by Pietro Lombardo, and followed by his sons Tullio and Antonio. In a Sanuto autograph miscellany, purchased by me a long time ago and which I gave to St. Mark’s library, are two letters from Giovanni Dario, dated 10th and 11th July, 1485, in the neighbourhood of Adrianople; where the Turkish camp found itself and where Bajazet II received presents from the Soldan of Egypt, from the Schah of the Indies (query Grand Mogul), and from the King of Hungary: of these matters Dario’s letters give many curious details. Then, in the printed Malipiero Annuals, page 136 (which err, I think, by a year), the Secretary Dario’s negotiations at the Porte are alluded to; and in date of 1484 he is said to have returned to Venice, having quarreled with the Venetian bailiff at Constantinople; the annalist adds that ‘Giovanni Dario was a native of Candia, and that the Republic was so well satisfied with him for having concluded the peace with Bajazet, that he received, as a gift from his country, an estate at Noventa, in the Paduan territory, worth 10,000 ducats for the dowers of one of his daughters.’ These largesses probably enabled him to build his home about the year 1486, and are doubtless hinted at in the inscription, which I restored A. D. 1837; it had no date and ran thus: URBIS. GENIO. JOHANNES. DARIVS. In the Venetian history of Paolo Morosini, page 594, it is also mentioned, that Giovanni Dario was, moreover, the Secretary who concluded the peace between Mahomet, the conqueror of Constantinople, and Venice, A. D. 1478, but, unless he built the house by proxy, that date has nothing to do with it; and in my mind, the fact of the present, and the inscription, warrant one’s dating it at 1486 and not 1450. SV III App.4

 

From RUSKIN’S VENICE: The Stones Revisited. Compiled and with photographs by Sarah Quill (Ashgate Publishing Company: Aldershot, 2000) pp. 151-152.

* Rawdon Brown purchased the Ca’Dario for £480, restored it, and later sold it. DW

 

 

JOHN RUSKIN