Inside the grand Venetian home of artist

By Hannah Martin

We were inspired by Venice—the architecture, the history, the monumentality,” says designer Vincenzo De Cotiis over Zoom, swinging open the shutters of the Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, a Baroque-style palace in the city where he has recently taken up residence on the piano nobile. It’s a misty afternoon in February and a few small boats are travelling along the waterway that has facilitated trade, transit, and cultural exchange for centuries. “When you’re here, you understand what happened in the 15th century,” continues the designer’s wife, Claudia Rose De Cotiis. “How Venice became a world market.”

A view inside the palatial home of architect and designer Vincenzo De Cotiis and his wife Claudia Rose—on the piano nobile of the Palazzo Giustinian Lolin in Venice—from the study to the living room, bedroom, and bath.

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In the living room, De Cotiis’s own sculptural furnishings sit with four 18th-century Jean Raoux paintings. The sculptures on the cocktail table are by Girolamo Campagna.

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This palazzo watched it all unfold. Likely constructed around the 15th century by the Miani family, it was bought by the Lolins in the early 17th century. Following plans by the Venetian architect Baldassare Longhena, it was rebuilt around 1630, then willed to one of their relatives, Giovanni Giustinian. The design featured a striking, rather classical façade defined by three bands of pilasters (festooned curtains above the Corinthian columns lend a dash of baroque flair), but Longhena left some traces of the medieval structure intact, like narrow peaked windows and the original floor plan.

Since the 19th century, the building has seen a variety of residents, including the doctor Francesco Aglietti and the dancer Maria Taglioni. In the 20th century it became home to the European music foundation of Ugo and Olga Levi, which still resides on the second floor. Each inhabitant has left their mark on the property, resulting in a sort of architectural mille-feuille with many centuries-old details still present: dazzling Murano glass chandeliers; cyan-coloured silk wall panels; and, unforgettably, four paintings by Jean Raoux, part of the palazzo’s inventory in 1766 and reacquired by the Ugo and Olga Levi Foundation in 1977.

Wrapped in original silk brocade, the study contains fibreglass and Murano glass furnishings by De Cotiis and an artwork by Michail Pirgelis.

When Vincenzo and Claudia Rose laid eyes on the place in 2019, the designer recalls, “it was love at first sight, for very uncomplicated reasons: It’s a typical Venetian palazzo, located on the banks of the Grand Canal, which casts these enchanting reflections of light onto the walls of the house, creating an immediate connection to the lifeblood of the city.”

The monumental dining table is hewn from recycled fibreglass and green malachite challant marble. The paintings are by Latifa Echakch, and the Murano glass chandelier is original to the palazzo.

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Vincenzo was thrilled at the prospect of adding the next layer to the property and he worked to sensitively restore the primary floor, bringing the building’s illustrious past into conversation with the Venice of the present—a buzzing hub of contemporary art, fashion, and culture. “I’m looking two ways, into the past and into the future,” muses the designer, who, carrying out that ethos, placed a glass-and-steel triptych by artist Anne Imhof so that it slices through the living room of the palazzo. The mirrored work—one of many in the project—reflects its baroque surroundings: the massive chandelier dripping with golden chains and Murano glass, the plastered walls with remnants of 19th-century Marmorino decorations, the carved burl-walnut doors. Mixed in are Vincenzo’s sculptural designs, which create an avant-garde sitting area—a cocktail table hewn from cast brass, recycled fibreglass, and malachite; a sofa wrapped in luxe mohair velvet.

Vincenzo’s renovations were mostly surface level—discreetly hiding away heating and electrical systems with polished silver-plated balustrades; tucking track lighting in the decorated timber beams of the ceiling; removing the remnants of an ugly ’80s renovation. “We wanted to allow the purity of the original space to breathe,” explains Vincenzo, who focused on enhancing what was already there. Silk tapestries were restored, original terrazzo floors revealed, the vermilion wall panels refurbished. “These are Venetian colours,” Vincenzo says of the palette, a departure from his usual grisaille. The blues throughout—drawn from the original silk wall covering—reflect the lagoon outside the windows; the red is the same colour as a neighbouring palazzo.

In every instance, Vincenzo imagined contemporary objects that might fit, narratively, into the Venetian context. Take the hulking cabinet in the primary bedroom, for example, made from German silver, hand-painted fibreglass, and white bronze. Its ziggurat form is a nod to a traditional Venetian typology that, in the 16th century, might have held dishes. Now it contains books and other personal items.

A hand-painted platform anchors the primary bedroom, which is enveloped in venetian red fabric. The antique panels are Chinese, the floor lamp (at left) is by De Cotiis, and the mirrored balustrade disguises the heating elements.

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Much like the patrician Venetians of yore, Vincenzo brought in the finest materials from around the world (all by boat via canal!)—yellow marble from Siena for a bath; a 12-foot-long slab of green Malachite Challant for the dining table. But in typical De Cotiis fashion, the opulence of marble, precious metals, and Murano glass is contrasted with the intriguing patina of less-traditional materials. Hand-painted recycled fibreglass, which almost looks like precious stone, appears in many of his furnishings; a brutalist bed platform, set atop original terrazzo floors, is hand-painted to resemble weathered concrete.

The mirror in a sumptuous, marble-clad bath is made of hand-painted recycled fibreglass, german silver, and glass. The vase, also a De Cotiis design, is Murano glass.

The breccia baixa marble was chosen for its resemblance to the Palazzo’s original ceiling, shown in this bath; the Carlo Bugatti chair is circa 1895.

These material conversations extend to the artworks. A colossal titanium-andaluminium piece by Michail Pirgelis and textural paintings by Sterling Ruby and Jean Degottex stand in stark, minimalist contrast to the decorative flourish of the interiors. Meanwhile, sculptures like Simone Fattal’s gestural Yellow Warrior, a vaguely anthropomorphic fibreglass piece by Vincenzo, and a pair of statues by Girolamo Campagna seem to speak to the fleshy figures in Jean Raoux’s paintings.

“There has to be a communication between art and life that happens within a house,” says Vincenzo, whose excavation of this property and others has long influenced his sculpture practice. His latest body of work focuses on arches—timeworn symbols of innovation—and will be unveiled this fall at Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s new Ladbroke Hall flagship in London, where he has also designed a restaurant and a boardroom. “The boundaries between historic categorizations, art, design, furniture, painting, all begin to blur with proximity to each other.” At the time of our call, furniture and art installed, Vincenzo and Claudia Rose were just beginning to stir it all in with their life. “We need to spend time here,” Claudia Rose observes. “To invite people for cocktails, to open the windows, and to have a drink on the Grand Canal—to live in the Venetian style.”

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