Fondazione Querini Stampalia: Carlo Scarpa’s Tribute To a Great Venetian Palazzo

As you walk across the Campo Santa Maria Formosa passing the campanile, you come across possibly the ugliest sculpted head in Venice on the keystone of an arched doorway. Certainly Ruskin thought so:

“A head, huge, inhuman, monstrous – leering in bestial degradation, too foul to be either pictured or described, or to be beheld for more than any instant.”

After gazing upon such a monstrosity you need to rest your eyes on something beautiful, so turn to the right an