PALAZZO MOCENIGO MUSEUM – VENICE
MARCH 7, 2025 – JULY 27, 2025
Edited by Roberta Orsi Landini, Chiara Squarcina
2025 is the year dedicated to Giacomo Casanova, and the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia is preparing for the first chapter of an investigation into the celebrated writer, poet, adventurer, and diplomat. This exploration will provide an in-depth look at his time, the aesthetic and social changes that redefined the concept of elegance and seduction in 18th-century men, the era in which modern men’s clothing was born.
An icon of a world and a civilization, Casanova offers an incredible insight into 18th-century Europe: the world of great courts and powerful dynasties, the exhilarating encounters with leading figures in the cultural and artistic world, the seductive unknowns of gambling, and the boundless, multifaceted metamorphoses of the theater. The exhibition of 18th-century clothing—with prestigious pieces, some from the rich collections of the Palazzo Mocenigo Museum, the Study Center for the History of Textiles and Costume, along with loans from the Stibbert Museum in Florence—allows visitors to delve into the 18th-century world of which Casanova was one of the most illustrious figures.
The exhibition, spread across the rooms of the museum’s first piano nobile, already characterized by 18th-century Venetian taste, helps us understand how aesthetics were an essential language, not only for seduction, but above all and essentially for the social affirmation of the individual in an era when visibility was the only means of asserting one’s social and economic role. The exhibition highlights how men’s clothing underwent a progressive transformation: from an expression of power and strength to a symbol of refinement, culture, and sensitivity. The fashion of the time, which was primarily codified in the three-piece suit—tailcoat, vest, and trousers—was refined and simplified, abandoning the redundancies of previous centuries and anticipating the discreet elegance that still characterizes men’s clothing today.
The exhibition is open from March 7 to July 27, 2025, with the Museum’s opening hours and admission.
