Fondazione dell’Albero d’Oro presents Nicolò Manucci, the Marco Polo of India. A Venetian at the 17th-century Mughal Court, an exhibition project dedicated to the life and travels of Nicolò Manucci (1638-1720), a Venetian of humble origins who, driven by a desire to explore the world, embarked in Venice in November 1653 on his way to the East, hiding in the hold of a tartan, never to return.
To recount the human adventure and atypical voyage of Nicolò Manucci, the manuscripts that make up the original version of the Storia do Mogor and their subsequent transcriptions, the Libro Nero and Libro Rosso, respectively kept at the State Library in Berlin, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, will be exceptionally brought together and exhibited for the first time at Palazzo Vendramin Grimani.
The exhibition intends to retrace the most salient stages in the life of the Venetian traveller through an itinerary that combines artefacts and decorative elements from different epochs with a selection of reproductions and digital installations of the manuscripts that will allow visitors to discover all the pages of the texts and the richness of the colours and illustrations of a vanished world. The aim is thus to offer the gaze of a privileged witness to the history and cultural richness of Mughal India.