Galleria Giorgio Franchetti at the Ca’ d’Oro in Venice is opening the exhibition "Serenissime trame", curated by Claudia Cremonini, Moshe Tabibnia and Giovanni Valagussa, on March, 23rd. This is the first museum presentation of the Zaleski collection, with a selection of twenty-five antique carpets - absolute masterpieces - from the Near East picked out from a precious, vast collection that is probably the most complete in the world.

The exhibition, hosted in the extraordinary Venetian building - produced by the Polo Museale del Veneto and Brescia’s Fondazione Tassara, to which the collection was recently donated - is a tribute to founder of the Ca’ d’Oro state museum Giorgio Franchetti’s passion for collecting, whose interests at a young age focused on carpets, showing a marked interest in the decorative arts.

A nucleus of very rare carpets made in the 15th and 16th Centuries was selected from the Zaleski collection, to represent some of the most prized carpet types which reached Venice along the trade routes from the Orient: extraordinary, highly colourful fabrics, composed of elaborate weaves with a powerful symbolic charge.

Comparing these carpets with some Italian paintings dating from the mid-15th Century to the mid-16th Century, chosen from an area of cultural influence closely linked to the domains of the Serenissima, allows to notice the extensive presence of these luxury objects in the northern area, particularly the Lombardia - Veneto and Este sphere.

The exhibition is part of the project to highlight the small but precious nucleus of Oriental carpets in the Franchetti collection, currently in storage; and it will also see three of the collection’s most precious textile products get permanently added to the museum’s exhibition.

The Moshe Tabibnia study centre provided all the necessary scientific support for the exhibition's concept. As well as choosing among the numerous masterpieces included in the Zaleski collection, it edited the dedicated section in the catalogue. One of the perspectives showcased in the exhibition is the double theme of how the Zaleski collection and Renaissance paintings show proof of the widespread presence of carpets at the time, as well as showcase Venice’s unique role in exposing Western artistic sensitivity to these works of art, thus making collectors interested in them.

Romain Zaleski and Giorgio Franchetti, among others mentioned in the exhibition, are perhaps two of the best examples of this.

The Moshe Tabibnia conservation centre supplied all technical support for the most proper set-up of the presentation.

Three important carpets from the Franchetti collection were restored for the occasion, with the generous contribution of Fondazione Bruschettini, Genova, Gallery Moshe Tabibnia and Open Care, to become part of the permanent collection.