This ambitious cross-cultural exhibition explores the relationship between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire, two rival superpowers in the Mediterranean, over four centuries (1400–1800) and in multiple spheres: artistic, culinary, diplomatic, economic, political, and technological. The exhibition comes to a spectacular conclusion with a gallery dedicated to Mariano Fortuny’s Venetian- and Ottoman-inspired fashions and decorative arts created in his Venetian palace in the early twentieth century.

Featuring more than 150 works of art in media including glass, paintings, prints, metalwork, and textiles, the exhibition draws from the varied and vast collections of Venice’s storied civic museums. The Venetian loans are joined by a trove of recently salvaged objects from a major Adriatic shipwreck, the large Venetian merchant ship Gagliana Grossa that sank while traveling from Venice to Constantinople in 1583. These fascinating items have never been exhibited outside Croatia, where the wreck occurred.

Organized by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and The Museum Box

Vittore Carpaccio. Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan, 1501–05. Tempera and oil on panel; 26 1/2 x 20 1/8 in., Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia – Museo Correr, Cl. I n. 0043