“I had a soul made for gaming; I won and lost with the same cheerfulness. […] Gaming, like love, is a passion which will not allow of one’s stopping halfway.”
Giacomo Casanova, Histoire de ma vie
“I had a soul made for gaming; I won and lost with the same cheerfulness. […] Gaming, like love, is a passion which will not allow of one’s stopping halfway.”
Giacomo Casanova, Histoire de ma vie
“Who are they? I do not know. I shall know. What filled me with joy was their bearing. The orchestra played. Three masks in dominoes approached my girls to invite them to dance a minuet; but by showing their torn shoes, they excused themselves. This gesture pleased me greatly. […]]”
Giacomo Casanova, Histoire de ma vie,
Vero
Casanova
Organised and promoted on the occasion of the three-hundredth anniversary of Giacomo Casanova’s birth, the exhibition pays tribute to one of the emblematic figures of the Venetian and European eighteenth century. Beyond the stereotypical image of the seducer, Casanova reveals a lively intelligence, irony and inexhaustible curiosity, which led him to move between cities, courts and salons, intertwining his own story with the cultural and political history of a Europe in ferment.
Vero Casanova does not follow a chronological path but proposes a free narrative, in which each work interprets an aspect of his personality and human experience, projecting it into the context of eighteenth-century Venice and the wider world in which he lived. Connections emerge with philosophy, theatre, science, art and the society of his time. Murano glass – mutable, seductive and complex – becomes a privileged narrative instrument: it reflects and distorts, fascinates and deceives, just like Casanova, master of disguise and the art of selfreinvention.
The works do not simply depict episodes, but translate ideas, moods and tensions into poetic forms, creating a continuous dialogue between myth and historical reality. Far from any celebratory intent, the exhibition is a theatrical inquiry into identity, desire and freedom—an invitation to reread the past with new eyes, through the vibrant gaze of matter.
“Vero Casanova” is part of the official initiatives for the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giacomo Casanova promoted by the Municipality of Venice. The exhibition will be at the Glass Museum of Murano from 19th September 2025 to the 3rd May 2026,
works
Magic
Zanetti Murano
The sculpture represents a stylised abstraction of the enigmatic face of the “Sorceress of Murano”, a figure evoked by Giacomo Casanova in his writings. Crafted in blown and hand-worked glass, the piece stands out for its intense midnight-blue tone, enhanced with silvery gleams from details in silver leaf. The hair, elegantly stylised, comes alive with delicate lampworked decorations depicting butterflies, symbols of transformation and metamorphosis. Suspended between reality and imagination, the sorceress is a timeless presence, guardian of mysterious and esoteric knowledge. Majestic and ambivalent, she embodies the promise of forgotten wisdom, evoking the fire and alchemy of the Murano furnace, the place of ceaseless transformation of matter into art.
Alchemy
artigianato Muranese
The work, composed of a vase and a bowl, explores the bond between alchemy and Murano glass art, creating a dialogue between Casanova’s esoteric quest and artisanal mastery. Made of blown glass, it is distinguished by the brilliant shimmering shades of avventurina, enriched with black inlays that enhance the interplay between light and shadow, illusion and reality. Avventurina, invented by Murano glassmakers in the early seventeenth century, is a precious glass paste characterised by tiny copper crystals that sparkle within the mass like stars. Its production is complex and uncertain, so much so that it was considered a true “adventure”, and for centuries has remained a secret guarded by a few masters. A symbol of mystery and transformation, avventurina evokes the alchemy of matter, transfigured by fire and the hidden knowledge of the glassmakers. In the work it becomes a metaphor for seduction and metamorphosis, recalling Casanova’s fascination with the occult, his ties with Freemasonry, and the restless curiosity that drove him beyond the boundaries of knowledge and experience.
Alchemy
artigianto muranese
The work, composed of a vase and a bowl, explores the bond between alchemy and Murano glass art, creating a dialogue between Casanova’s esoteric quest and artisanal mastery. Made of blown glass, it is distinguished by the brilliant shimmering shades of avventurina, enriched with black inlays that enhance the interplay between light and shadow, illusion and reality. Avventurina, invented by Murano glassmakers in the early seventeenth century, is a precious glass paste characterised by tiny copper crystals that sparkle within the mass like stars. Its production is complex and uncertain, so much so that it was considered a true “adventure”, and for centuries has remained a secret guarded by a few masters. A symbol of mystery and transformation, avventurina evokes the alchemy of matter, transfigured by fire and the hidden knowledge of the glassmakers. In the work it becomes a metaphor for seduction and metamorphosis, recalling Casanova’s fascination with the occult, his ties with Freemasonry, and the restless curiosity that drove him beyond the boundaries of knowledge and experience.
Game
Vetrate Artistiche Murano
A pyramid of playing cards in silkscreened glass pays tribute to Casanova’s passion for gambling, transforming it into a metaphor for his vision of the world. The cards, faithful reproductions of eighteenth-century French decks, are arranged to suggest an unstable balance, recalling the constant tension between skill, strategy and luck. In the eighteenth century, gaming was a social ritual laden with prestige and risk, tolerated yet feared. Casanova practised it with flair, turning it into a refined instrument of seduction and power. In line with a widespread custom of the time, some playing cards were used for jotting down thoughts and notes: the work revives this habit, with autograph quotations from Casanova in French inscribed on the back of certain cards. The result is a composition that conveys the vertigo of the game, poised between ruin and ascent, as in Casanova’s own life.
Enlightenment
Wave Murano Glass
An opaque white vase in overlaid and hammered glass, lit from within, becomes a symbol of Enlightenment thought and the thirst for knowledge that animated eighteenth-century Europe. The work evokes the link between Casanova and the Age of Enlightenment, celebrating his intellectual curiosity and his tireless pursuit of new experiences. A restless spirit, Casanova moved across courts, salons and academies, engaging in dialogue with figures such as Voltaire, Rousseau and D’Alembert. He was never a theorist: he did not write treatises—he lived ideas. Interested in science and progress, yet equally drawn to the irrational, he inhabited the boundary between reason and mystery, light and shadow. Witness to the transformations of the eighteenth century, he took part in debates on religion, education and politics, though he remained tied to the splendours of the ancien régime. The work translates this ambivalence into visual form, capturing the tension between conservation and revolution that marked his existence.
Enlightenment
Wave Murano Glass
An opaque white vase in overlaid and hammered glass, lit from within, becomes a symbol of Enlightenment thought and the thirst for knowledge that animated eighteenth-century Europe. The work evokes the link between Casanova and the Age of Enlightenment, celebrating his intellectual curiosity and his tireless pursuit of new experiences. A restless spirit, Casanova moved across courts, salons and academies, engaging in dialogue with figures such as Voltaire, Rousseau and D’Alembert. He was never a theorist: he did not write treatises—he lived ideas. Interested in science and progress, yet equally drawn to the irrational, he inhabited the boundary between reason and mystery, light and shadow. Witness to the transformations of the eighteenth century, he took part in debates on religion, education and politics, though he remained tied to the splendours of the ancien régime. The work translates this ambivalence into visual form, capturing the tension between conservation and revolution that marked his existence.
Illusion
gambaro & tagliapietra
Composed of 125 tumblers created using cane techniques in different colours—white, black, steel and ivory, with matte or transparent finishes— the work, a mask, broadens the technical range to include filigree and reticello canes. This variety creates a visual ensemble rich in textures and reflections, capable of changing according to light and perspective. The central theme is illusion, a hallmark of Casanova, master of dissimulation. A seducer and strategist, he manipulated and deceived, making the mask his tool of reinvention. In eighteenth-century Venice, the mask was not merely a disguise but a true social code: the Bauta, with its white larva mask, cloak (tabarro) and tricorne, allowed individuals to act beyond convention. Like an anamorphosis revealing different meanings depending on the angle of view, the work alternates opacity and transparency, linearity and complex interlacing, inviting the viewer to ask what is real and what is mere appearance.
Theatre
Nicola moretti
The work is inspired by the theatrical dimension of Casanova’s life, a man who turned his very existence into a stage, and pays homage to eighteenth- century Venetian theatre through the reproduction of a figure from a play by Goldoni. Overlapping glass panels with striped textures made with canes create a scenic play of transparency and depth. Born into a family of actors, Casanova grew up immersed in the art of performance. Seducer and shape-shifter, he played ever-changing roles with skill and ease. A contemporary of Carlo Goldoni, he shared the same cultural milieu and embodied its spirit of renewal: while the playwright abandoned masks in favour of realistic characters, Casanova donned and reinvented the masks of life according to circumstance. The work translates this dynamic into glass images, restoring a personal comedy in which every encounter is a scene and every experience an act, poised between truth and fiction.
Theatre
nicola moretti
The work is inspired by the theatrical dimension of Casanova’s life, a man who turned his very existence into a stage, and pays homage to eighteenth- century Venetian theatre through the reproduction of a figure from a play by Goldoni. Overlapping glass panels with striped textures made with canes create a scenic play of transparency and depth. Born into a family of actors, Casanova grew up immersed in the art of performance. Seducer and shape-shifter, he played ever-changing roles with skill and ease. A contemporary of Carlo Goldoni, he shared the same cultural milieu and embodied its spirit of renewal: while the playwright abandoned masks in favour of realistic characters, Casanova donned and reinvented the masks of life according to circumstance. The work translates this dynamic into glass images, restoring a personal comedy in which every encounter is a scene and every experience an act, poised between truth and fiction.
Journey
effetre
A large map of Europe, composed of white and grey glass drops, forms the visual fabric upon which the places of Casanova’s life unfold. Red murrine mark the cities he visited or inhabited, transforming glass into an emotional and narrative geography. The work explores travel as intimate experience and as a practice of knowledge. Casanova did not follow the codified model of the aristocratic “Grand Tour”: he travelled to live, to transform himself. Every stage was a theatre of encounters, every city an opportunity to observe, act, seduce. He was not a tourist nor a mere explorer, but a lucid interpreter of eighteenth-century European society, moving effortlessly between courts and brothels, academies and taverns. His gaze was never superficial: he sought to understand, to decipher, to conquer. The work conveys this restless energy, in which the world is not a destination but a stage upon which to exercise the desire to exist.
Deceit
barbini specchi veneziani
The work reinterprets the classic Venetian mirror to explore the theme of illusion, one of the defining traits of Casanova’s life and persona. Composed of inclined reflective surfaces, the piece generates visual distortions that confuse the gaze and destabilise the perception of reality. Like Casanova, the mirror seduces with elegance and ambiguity, showing only what it chooses to reveal. A master of disguise and adaptation, Casanova traversed eighteenth-century Europe assuming ever-shifting identities: adventurer, diplomat, writer, spy. His life was a refined script in which deception became resource, strategy and survival art. Yet behind every mask lies a fundamental truth: deceit does not erase but transforms. The work reflects this ambivalence, offering a play of light and reflections where truth and fiction pursue each other. Like Casanova, the mirror can never be fully grasped, inviting us to question what we see and what eludes us. To look, here, is already a form of illusion.
Deceit
barbini specchi veneziani
The work reinterprets the classic Venetian mirror to explore the theme of illusion, one of the defining traits of Casanova’s life and persona. Composed of inclined reflective surfaces, the piece generates visual distortions that confuse the gaze and destabilise the perception of reality. Like Casanova, the mirror seduces with elegance and ambiguity, showing only what it chooses to reveal. A master of disguise and adaptation, Casanova traversed eighteenth-century Europe assuming ever-shifting identities: adventurer, diplomat, writer, spy. His life was a refined script in which deception became resource, strategy and survival art. Yet behind every mask lies a fundamental truth: deceit does not erase but transforms. The work reflects this ambivalence, offering a play of light and reflections where truth and fiction pursue each other. Like Casanova, the mirror can never be fully grasped, inviting us to question what we see and what eludes us. To look, here, is already a form of illusion.
Pleasure
simone cenedese – seguso gianni
A large blown-glass chandelier celebrates pleasure in all its sensory forms, transforming the space into a vortex of light, desire and seduction. The transparent crystal arms, executed in the Rezzonico technique, trace an ascending spiral that recalls movement and ecstasy. Set against this structure are blown ruby-red elements, reminiscent of dancing tentacles, which amplify the rhythm of the work and heighten its sensuality. Inspired by Baroque Venice, the chandelier becomes a symbol of festivity and voluptuousness, evoking the euphoria of the moment and the triumph of the ephemeral. Glass, a living luminous substance, comes alive in a choreography of forms and textures that allude to the warmth of bodies, the excesses of banquets, the sparkle of glances. Created through the collaboration of two Murano glassworks, the piece is an homage to the art of living with elegance and daring. It does not merely illuminate, but envelops and captivates, like an echo of Casanova’s golden nights, where beauty was a language and pleasure a way of being in the world.
Memory
yalos Murano
The work reflects on the value of memory as trace, testimony and form of freedom. Composed of forty-five elements in cast and hot-formed glass, with an iridescent opaline finish, it takes the shape of an open book from which light, silent pages rise. Each glass sheet becomes the support of a fragile yet persistent knowledge, suspended between vision and narration. Casanova, a man of the Enlightenment, did not merely live intensely: he wrote in order to endure. His Memoirs, drafted at the end of his life, are not only the account of an extraordinary existence but the attempt to imprint in time a complex identity, poised between freedom, melancholy and a yearning for truth. The contrast between the apparent stillness of the form and the dynamism of the iridescent surface conveys the tension between fixation and transformation, between memory preserved and memory renewed. The work thus celebrates writing as the final gesture of escape, and memory as a living legacy, regenerating itself with every reading and every gaze.
Memory
yalos murano
The work reflects on the value of memory as trace, testimony and form of freedom. Composed of forty-five elements in cast and hot-formed glass, with an iridescent opaline finish, it takes the shape of an open book from which light, silent pages rise. Each glass sheet becomes the support of a fragile yet persistent knowledge, suspended between vision and narration. Casanova, a man of the Enlightenment, did not merely live intensely: he wrote in order to endure. His Memoirs, drafted at the end of his life, are not only the account of an extraordinary existence but the attempt to imprint in time a complex identity, poised between freedom, melancholy and a yearning for truth. The contrast between the apparent stillness of the form and the dynamism of the iridescent surface conveys the tension between fixation and transformation, between memory preserved and memory renewed. The work thus celebrates writing as the final gesture of escape, and memory as a living legacy, regenerating itself with every reading and every gaze.
Escape
costantini glass beads – zanetti murano – effetre
This collaborative work by masters of three glassworks celebrates freedom as vital impulse and unstoppable force, inspired by Casanova’s legendary escape from the Piombi in 1756. A structure of one hundred hollow aquamarine Murano-glass tubes, light yet solid, outlines the stylised shape of a cage. Inside, chains of twelve strings of black and red seed beads symbolically evoke the bonds of imprisonment, while a net made of forty-nine necklaces of lampworked beads and seed-bead pive intensifies its visual and conceptual impact. Within this space, solid-glass birds (made with recycled glass made from secondary raw materials*) stand out as luminous, resilient presences, symbols of escape and regeneration. Casanova, elusive spirit, eluded not only the walls of a prison but also the social, cultural and moral constraints of his time. His escape became an affirmation of identity and inner freedom. The work conveys this surge, suggesting that every obstacle can become a passage, every prison a point of departure. Like Casanova, art too becomes escape, invention and movement.
*glass and sustainability
The work Escape also offers a reflection on sustainability, in continuity with projects promoted by Consorzio Promovetro Murano together with CoReVe – Consorzio Recupero Vetro. The blue tubes forming its structure are made from production waste, while the base and birds – previously shown in the exhibition Murano Upcycling Glass at the Murano Glass Museum in 2023 – are made of secondary raw material (recyclable glass). The work demonstrates that glass can be reborn in ever new forms, combining creative reuse, aesthetic value and functionality, strengthening the bond between artisanal tradition and the principles of the circular economy.
where
At the Murano Glass Museum. in Fondamenta Marco Giustinian, 8, a few meters from the “Murano-Museo” vaporetto stop and the Cathedral of San Donato.
opening hours
Everyday 10 AM – 6 PM (Last entrance at 5 PM). The closing operations of the museum begin 20 minutes before the closing time.
Starting from the 1st November 10 AM – 5 PM (Last entrance at 4 PM). The closing operations of the museum begin 20 minutes before the closing time.
Starting from the 1st November 10 AM – 5 PM (Last entrance at 4 PM). The closing operations of the museum begin 20 minutes before the closing time.
tickets
Full price € 15
Reduced € 7.50 | Children aged 6 to 14; students from 15 to 25; visitors over 65; holders of the Rolling VeniceCard; holders of ISIC – International Student Identity Card.
Free | Residents and those born within the Comune di Venezia; infants between 0 and 5; disabled persons plus accompanier; tourist guides enabled in Italy accompanying groups or individual visitors; accompanying teachers of school groups (up to 2 teachers per group); ICOM members; MUVE ordinary partners; holders of the MUVE Friend Card; holders of Art Pass Venice Foundation; holders of Venetian Heritage Foundation membership card (valid for two people); holders of Save Venice Inc. Fellow membership card (valid for two people); members of “Amici dei Musei e Monumenti Veneziani”.
getting here
The closest vaporetto stop is “Murano – Museo“, which can be reached with the ACTV lines 4.1 and 3. Or you can swimm to the canal in front of the entrance.