I was looking at this painting by Italian artist Salvatore Emblema yesterday at the Palazzo Zenobio http://venice.jc-r.net/palaces/zenobio.htm. This grand 17th Century building - on the western edge of Dorsoduro - is again this year the locale for several Biennale installations. The Syrian Pavilion has dedicated several of its "Artist's Rooms" exhibit to Emblema's work.
As I was photographing this painting, I heard water dripping - very lightly - and thought it must be part of an installation in another room. (That's the thing about the Biennale. It's sometimes hard to know what's part of the show and what isn't.) It got progressively louder and stronger and when I turned around the ceiling above the opposite wall was leaking heavily. I ran to tell the young woman sitting the show - I was, literally, one of only about a half-dozen visitors in the building - and by the time she and other "officials" got there, there was a large puddle on the floor and water had run down the length of one of the paintings. There was damage to it, to be sure, but it didn't look like it was completely ruined, at least to my uneducated eye. Obviously, they closed the room off to the public immediately.
All I could think of was the poor artist and what his reaction would be. I assumed he was a young man - I have no idea why. Because the Biennale is "contemporary?" That's silly. I looked him up and Salvatore Emblema died in 2006 at the age of 87. Perhaps he's laughing about it.
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