Friday, Apr. 17, 1964
The Party's Over
"Going, going, gone!" echoed a thousand times through the vast marble interiors of Venice's 17th century Palazzo Labia last week. Going, going, gone was another vestige of Venetian elegance, knocked down by the gondola-load to smaller-than-life nobodies representing Swiss antique dealers, dubious shops on Madison Avenue, secretive European and American collectors, and doubtless some ambassadors from small countries, intent on robbing Italy's art treasures via the diplomatic pouch.
In 1646, a Spanish merchant family named Labia started building a palace just off the Grand Canal. The palace's ultimate glory was a set of 18th century frescoes by Tiepolo, which depicted the story of Antony and Cleopatra with almost as much flair as the 20th Century-Fox film. With the extinction of the Labia clan, the palace turned into a squalid dump; illiterate boarders spent unknowing nights under the Tiepolos. In 1948, another Spaniard, the wealthy Don Carlos de Beistegui, now 78, rediscovered the palace, as he said, "with a violence of love and passion that no woman has inspired in me."
For ten years, Don Carlos plunged the riches he gets from Mexican silver mines, South African diamonds and Spanish real estate into the empty 89-room palazzo. For an estimated $3,000,000, he created a magnificent clutter. Oriental porcelains and blue Sevres china, Roman drinking cups and medieval armory filled every corner. Gobelin tapestries, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, caparisoned the walls. His personal squadron of ten gondoliers was liveried in silk and velvet costumes copied from Tiepolo and other old masters. In 1951, Don Carlos, decked out in a curly peruke and balanced atop 16-in.-platform shoes that made him 6-ft. 10-in. tall, threw a costume party for 1,500 cafe socialites flown in from Paris, New York and London. Yet, "grand passions finish," as an old lady friend of Don Carlos noted last week. Venetians liked Don Carlos for a while, but cooled to him when he began pouring out whiskey "in spoonfuls." And so the splendiferous Spaniard turned to a new hobby: refurbishing a castle near Paris, where he is building a neo-Gothic tomb for his recently deceased dog.
Don Carlos tossed his treasures away like toy trinkets. The Italian nation al radio-TV network bought the building although the Tiepolos are now unpurchasable state treasures.
Some 2,000 bargain hunters from the Rothschilds down to some of Beistegui's ex-gondoliers thronged to the auction. Rumor had it that John Paul Getty was there in disguise. A set of four candlesticks went for $25,000; an 18th century Virgin attributed to Nazari went for $900. The total realized by Don Carlos for his Venetian trifle was $1,968,000. As one bargain-seeker put it: "With this auction, another colorful chapter of Venetian history has been closed. It started with a party--and now the party's over."
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