Behind Closed Door

His reimagining of ancient public buildings in and around Venice made him an Italian icon, but the 20th-century architect Carlo Scarpa saved some of his most powerful poetry for private homes he made for those he loved.

- Christopher Bollen

When Maria Cagnoli, a 63-year-old rheumatologist from the Northern Italian town of Bergamo, stepped off the elevator onto the top floor of a converted 17th-century Venice palazzo for a satellite exhibition a week before the 2015 Biennale, she had no idea she was about to become a caretaker of history.

Even before she could survey the works on display, the apartment itself possessed her. One of a few dozen residences designed by Carlo Scarpa, the legendary Venetian architect known primarily for his reimagining of museums and other public spaces, it had been created in 1963 as an office and home for a lawyer named Luigi Scatturin. A well-connected art lover whose brother-in-law was Tancredi, the abstractionist known by his first name, Scatturin had long represented Scarpa. The attorney’s heirs had inherited the 2,700-square-foot residence after their father’s death in 2009 and were looking to sell it. They had agreed to host the show, hoping it would attract a buyer who might appreciate its extraordinary provenance and the unique — and consuming — challenges of owning an iconic property in a city that reveres Scarpa and cares deeply about preservation. As soon as Cagnoli, who had been searching unsuccessfully for a flat in Venice, entered the space, she knew she had found not merely a pied-à-terre but a calling.