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Art restoration students outside the entrance to Villa Hériot - Photo: Cat Bauer
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(Venice, Italy) There is a lovely neo-Byzantine villa on the island of Giudecca surrounded by a sprawling garden with a sweeping view of the Venice lagoon. Constructed by the French philanthropist Cyprienne Hériot in the 1920s, Villa Hériot is now the headquarters of the International Institute of Art, which offers a three-year professional training course in Cultural Heritage Restoration.
The Università Internazionale dell’Arte (UIA) was founded in the early 1970s in response to the devastating floods that swept Venice and Florence in 1966 and the urgent need to save the cultural heritage of the cities. Recently I toured the institute, together with the eminent designer Roger Thomas and his husband, Arthur Libera. It was one of those Venetian visits where the magnetic forces of the universe seemed to converge to unite like-minded travelers through space and time.
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Portrait of Madame Olympe Hériot, née Cyprienne Dubernet by Théobald Chartan, 1891 |
Cyprienne Hériot - 19th-20th Century Patron of the Arts & Philanthropist
How Villa Hériot came to be constructed is a fascinating story in itself. Cyprienne Hériot was born Anne-Marie Dubernet on October 2, 1857 into a modest family in Lot-et-Garonne, France. Her father spun wool. As a young woman she went to Paris to earn a living and found work selling corsets at the Grands Magasins du Louvre, the magnificient new department store on Rue de Rivoli in Place du Palais-Royal that had supplanted the Grand Hôtel du Louvre.
In 1855, Paris had undergone a total transformation. The dark streets surrounding the Louvre were replaced with wide avenues in preparation for the Universal Exhibitions of 1855 and 1867 and the expected swarm of international visitors. Part of the preparation was the construction of the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, which would become the largest hotel in Europe at the time of its opening with 700 rooms and a staff of 1,250. The Pereire brothers and their Crédit Mobilier banking company financed the construction.
The ground floor was rented to a shopping arcade called Les Galeries du Louvre, which was founded by August Hériot and two other investors with the backing of the Pereire brothers. After the Pereire brothers' financial empire collapsed, in 1875 Hériot and one of his partners bought the entire structure. The renters became the owners of the palatial building.
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Grands Magasins du Louvre, 1877
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August Hériot was a fabulously wealthy man when he died in 1879, leaving
his shares to his brother Zacharie Olympe, who was a military
commander. At age 46, Olympe Hériot interrupted his military career to
manage the Grands Magasins du Louvre department store -- where the
22-year-old Anne-Marie Dubernet worked selling corsets.
A cozier version of the hotel was relocated to the opposite side of Place du Palais-Royal and by 1887, the original building had been gradually transformed into a dazzling department store called the Grands Magasins du Louvre.
On August 24, 1887, the former corset-seller Anne-Marie Dubernet married the owner of the company, Commander Olympe Hériot, after having two sons born out of wedlock (August II and Olympe II) and began her extraordinary transformation into Cyprienne Hériot.
Inspiration for Au Bonheur de Dames?
Some say that Anne-Marie and her story from rags-to-riches inspired the character of Denise Baudu in Emile Zola's Au Bonheur de Dames set in the world of department stores, but I think perhaps it was the other way around -- the novel was published in 1882-1883, and Anne-Marie did not marry Olympe Hériot until 1887. In addition to August II and Olympe II, the couple would go on to have two daughters, Virginie and then Jean, who died in infancy.
Olympe and Cyprienne were generous patrons of the arts, and the owners of several magnificent properties. At his own expense and on his own land in Southern France, Commander Hériot had constructed a school for young military orphans aged five to nine. What would become the Ecole Militaire Enfantine Hériot opened in February 1887. Over the next 80 years, more than 4500 children would study there. When Olympe died in 1899, Cyprienne remained deeply involved with the school, erecting a monument to her husband, expanding the grounds and opening her chateau in Côte d'Armor to the children for holidays.
Cyprienne spent a lot of her inheritance on charity, but also indulged in an assortment of spectacular homes and a sailing yacht named Katoomba. The yacht would have a great impact on the lives of her children, especially her daughter, Virginie, who would become an esteemed yachtswoman, winning the 1928 Summer Olympics in the 8 Metre Aile V. Cyprienne's passion for creating villas, restoring properties and educating schoolchildren leads us to Villa Hériot in Venice on the island of Giudecca.
Roger Thomas - 20th-21st Century Designer & Patron of the Arts
The American designer Roger Thomas's philosophy is “to create drama, humor, surprise, mystery, and intrigue, all with ultimate comfort and elegance." Similar to how the Grand Hôtel du Louvre revolutionized Paris a century before, Thomas, together with real estate magnate Steve Wynn utterly transformed the Las Vegas Strip when they created the Mirage Hotel & Casino, the mega-resort that flipped the casino experience on its head when it opened in 1989. With a degree from Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts and a fascination for the design principles of the ancient world, Thomas brought luxury and exquisite taste to an environment previously known for funky gambling. At the time of its opening, the Mirage was the largest hotel in the world, with 3,044 rooms.
Their next big project, the Bellagio, rocketed opulence into the stratosphere. Thomas broke all the rules of casino design with his lofty ceilings decorated with glass chandeliers and skylights that let the sunshine in. He mixed antiques with contemporary pieces, sprinkling European décor amongst the slot machines, echoing the elegance of Venetian gaming rooms centuries before. Wynn and Thomas went on to create more uber-resorts like the Wynn Las Vegas and the Macau in China. Steve Wynn, who is considered to be the father of today's Las Vegas, credits Thomas’s taste level and creativity to "sixty per cent of the success we’ve had.”
According to the New Yorker article Royal Flush - How Roger Thomas Redesigned Vegas by Jonah Lehrer, Roger Thomas is Las Vegas royalty: "His father, E. Parry Thomas, is often referred to as the 'quiet kingmaker' of the city, and is widely credited with saving Vegas from the grip of organized crime. Nevada developers had always relied on the Mafia for financing because legitimate banks refused to give casinos construction loans. But, in the nineteen-fifties, Thomas, as the young C.E.O. of the Bank of Las Vegas, saw the lack of credit as a business opportunity and began giving casinos access to clean capital. In the late sixties, he became a lead adviser to Howard Hughes, who had started buying up casinos."
The Roger Thomas Collection
Nowadays, Roger Thomas stays keenly in the game, exuding the same intense creativity and intelligence on a more personal and serene level with The Roger Thomas Collection. He and his husband, Arthur Libera, are welcome new denizens of Venice. They were putting the finishing touches on Ca' del Duca, their piano nobile on the Grand Canal, when I met them for a socially-distanced drink. Their new home is warm and welcoming, and brimming with refinement.
Joining us was art restorer, Claudia Vittori, who had dropped by to examine a recently-acquired painting of Saint Sebastian, Thomas's favorite saint. I asked her if she was associated with UIA, the University of Art Restoration at Villa Hériot, and she said it just so happened that she would be there the next day since the third-year students had final exams and she was one of the professors. I had been meaning to visit the school for a long time, and Thomas said he would like to go, too. He is passionate about preserving Venice's treasures for future
generations, and recently joined the board of Venetian Heritage, an
international non-profit whose restoration projects safeguard the cultural history of the
Venetian Republic.
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Villa Hériot interior - Photo: Cat Bauer
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Raffaele Mainella - 19th-20th Century Designer, Artist & Architect
The artist and architect Raffaele Mainella (1856-1941) trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. He met his patron, the Swiss-German orientalist Baron von Gonzenbach, at the Carlo Naya photography studio in Piazza San Marco, a hub for international travelers. Von Gonzenbach swept Mainella up and took him on his travels to the East along the Nile, to Arab villages and to the Holy Land, an experience that greatly influenced his work.
Back in Venice, Mainella's exotic watercolors of his journeys were shown in 1897 at the second Venice International Art Festival, which brought him to the attention of elite patrons of the art world. He became well-known in Paris, where he was commissioned to design and decorate villas, palaces and gardens. In the early 1900s, Mainella was commissioned by none other than Cyprienne Hériot -- who had remarried and become M.me Douine-Hériot -- to design her Villa Cypris on the French Riviera.
In 1911, Cyprienne hired Mainella -- who, by then, had returned to Venice to design the neo-Gothic Palazzetto Stern on the Grand Canal for another grand dame, the author Ernesta de Hierschel Stern -- to transform the ancient Abbey of San Gregorio on the Grand Canal and its Gothic cloister into a residence.
Villa Hériot is born
In 1926, Cyprienne was again a widow -- her second husband, Roger Douine had died the year before. She was pushing 70 when she bought land on the island of Giudecca for Mainella to transform into the picturesque Villa Hériot, with a main house for the family, another house for guests, a servants' quarters, a spacious garden, and a covered dock for the boat. Construction was completed in 1929, and the neo-Byzantine villa joined other newly-constructed properties on the island of Giudecca for international society to enjoy.
The outbreak of World War II put an end to the festivities and the Hériots returned to France. During the war, the Villa Hériot complex was requisitioned by the Germans and then by the Allies.
Cyprienne Hériot died in Paris on December 5, 1945 at the age of 88. Her son, Auguste II, either donated or sold the property to the Venice municipality in 1947 with the stipulation that it become a school in keeping with Hériot family tradition of supporting education for the young. The main house became the Carlo Goldoni elementary school and the guest house was used for children with tuberculosis.
Then, in the early 1970s, the main house of Villa Hériot became the headquarters for the International University of Art Restoration in Venice. The guest house is now the home of IVESER, Istituto veneziano per la storia della Resistenza e della società contemporanea. Luca Ferrari, a Venetian journalist and former restoration student of the university, graciously made arrangements for me, Roger Thomas and his husband Arthur Libera to take a tour of UIA at Villa Hériot.
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Wood lab at Villa Hériot, the University of Art Restoration in Venice - Photo: Cat Bauer
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The International University of Art Restoration (UIA) in Venice
The courses at the university are structured into three stages, each lasting a year: wood, stone and decorated architectural surfaces like frescoes. In their final year, UIA students work with professional restorers in some of the most prestigious churches, museums and organizations in Venice, such as the Giorgio Cini Foundation and the Church of San Nicolò da Tolentino.
The students learn theoretical approaches to restoration techniques and take part in practical workshops. It is a rigorous course from Monday to Friday that requires 630 hours of classroom-laboratory sessions and 270 hours of construction site training for each year of the course -- and it is entirely free, funded through the Veneto Region.
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Roger Thomas & instructor Matteo Marton - Photo: Cat Bauer
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We were fortunate to visit UIA at a time during the pandemic when the regulations were less restrictive, and able to witness both the first-year wood restoration students and the second-year stone restoration students in action.
Roger Thomas seemed to be in his element; I was impressed by his knowledge of the restoration process. He had an in-depth discussion with instructor Matteo Marton about the nature of wood even though neither was proficient in the other's language -- they seemed to be communicating with their hearts. When Marton realized that Thomas knew his timber, he dashed out of the room and came back triumphant, holding a black lump that looked completely unimpressive to my uneducated eyes but sent them both into a state of excitement. It turned out to be a piece of bog wood that Marton had found in the waters around Marcon, just outside Venice. He'd had it carbon-dated and it was about 1600 years old.
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Roger Thomas & Michele Gottardi - Photo: Cat Bauer
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Michele Gottardi, the Director of UIA, was kind enough to take the time to escort us to the stone restoration class in progress on the ground floor, as well as the wood-paneled sitting room. A professor of philosophy and scholar of Italian cinema and history, he was previously the President of Ateneo Veneto, a stalwart Venetian institution of science, literature and arts.
There are plenty of art works and much cultural heritage that needs to be restored in
Venice and the Veneto, in Italy and Europe, and throughout the rest of
the world, so I imagined that most students would find work after graduation, especially after the November 2019 floods that devastated Venice. I asked Professor Gottardi what the statistics were, and he said that about 40% to 60% would find employment. Roger Thomas supposed that it was the restoration projects themselves that needed better funding.
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| Stone laboratory at Villa Hériot, the University of Art Restoration in Venice - Photo: Cat Bauer |
As we walked out the front door of Villa Hériot, the lagoon shimmering in the sunlight, I thought of all the elements that had come together throughout history to create a university for art restoration on the shores of the island of Giudecca.
Anne-Marie Dubernet, the young woman who had begun her adult life selling corsets and then transformed herself into Madam Cyprienne Hériot, patron of the arts, would be pleased that the tranquil environment she had created is now the home of Venice's International University of Art Restoration.
Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
