The Poly MGM Museum in Macao has inaugurated new sections of the exhibition “Silk Roads Beyond Borders,” including, for the first time in Asia, the display of masterpieces of Venetian art from the Paolo and Carolina Zani Foundation in Brescia. This “exhibition within the exhibition” has been organized and curated by the Associazione Nuova Artemarea ETS for the Poly MGM Museum, with the patronage of the Consulate General of Italy in Hong Kong and Macao.
The new section aims to strengthen Macao’s role as a platform for cultural exchange between Italy and China, and more broadly between East and West.
On loan for the first time on this occasion, “The Molo from the Basin of San Marco” (1733–34) by Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto—one of the Venetian master’s most significant works—depicts the maritime entrance to Piazza San Marco, which for centuries served as both a point of arrival and departure for embassies and trade from around the world. The painting brings to Asia the symbolic image of Venetian power, long celebrated and admired for its crystalline light.
Also on display, until 30 August, is a work by the major Venetian artist Michele Marieschi, a contemporary of Canaletto: “View of Ca’ Foscari and Palazzo Balbi” (1738–40). The painting exemplifies how Venetian architecture was idealized and disseminated throughout Europe and beyond.
The works on display also symbolically represent the exchanges between Italy—particularly Venice—and China across the centuries: from the ancient world, through the medieval period of commercial exchange marked by the extraordinary figure of Marco Polo, followed by Matteo Ricci, and up to the present day, including twentieth-century Chinese reinterpretations of Venetian visual culture.
Among those attending the inauguration were the Consul General of Italy in Hong Kong and Macao, Carmelo Ficarra; the Director of the Museum of the Paolo and Carolina Zani Foundation, Massimiliano Capella; and the President and Vice President of the Associazione Nuova Artemarea ETS, Guicciardo Sassoli de’ Bianchi Strozzi and Giorgia Cestaro, respectively, together with directors from more than ten Chinese and international museums and institutions.
