The Captivating Art Piece In Venice Uniquely Displaying The Haunting Threat Of Climate Change

In 2017, if you splurged on a classic, quintessentially Venetian stay in an opulent suite at the Ca' Sagredo, the luxury hotel built in the 15th century as a residential palace, you could have looked out the window onto the Grand Canal to see something that appeared to be a scene straight out of Roman mythology. You'd find a giant set of sculpted alabaster hands, reaching up out of the lapping water, as if out of the era of gods and monsters, grasping the corner of the hotel and gently buoying it up, cradling it against harm. 

Those hands were a sculpture titled "Support," an installation by artist Lorenzo Quinn, the son of mid-1900s Hollywood movie star, Anthony Quinn. The massive, graceful artwork was first installed in 2017 to coincide with the Venice Bienniale, and proved so popular that it remained on display for six months after the Bienniale ended. And the United Nations liked its message so much that a replica will be on display for you to see and appreciate at COP25, the 2025 U.N. Climate Change Conference in the art-filled city of Madrid.

Quinn has deep personal connections to his work. The Mexican-Italian artist's mother and wife are both native Venetians, and he was inspired to create the sculpture while sitting on the terrace at Ca' Sagredo overlooking the Grand Canal, pondering the forces of climate change threatening Venice, the world, and his own children's future. "Support" is about the hope that future generations can lift us out of this predicament, and he used his son Anthony's hands as his model and inspiration. "I hope my art brings a new focus of attention to a global calamity that we are faced with," Quinn said on Instagram when the exhibit was first installed.

In 2019, Lorenzo Quinn's "Support" proved positively prophetic. Venice was buffeted by a series of storms that flooded 80% of the city. Between subsidence (the sinking of the land mass) and rising sea levels, scientists have predicted that Venice's Piazza San Marco will be as under water as the Lost City of Atlantis by the year 2150. If that sounds a long way off, bear in mind that the city is 1,500 years old, so 100 years, give or take, is but the blink of an eye. Proof that even in cities renowned for their antiquities, modern artists have a lot to say that is relevant.

Although "Support" was a temporary installation, and is now gone (though now you can see the replica in Madrid), the artist continues to be inspired by the ecologically fragile city of Venice, and has created other installations for the city that you can still see. In 2019, fresh off the worst flooding in decades, his contribution to the Venice Bienniale was "Building Bridges," a series of forearms clasping hands to form a series of 49-foot tall archways over one of Venice's storied waterways.

Originally intended to be another temporary installation in a central part of the city, objections to such modern art marring the cityscape relegated it to a more obscure locale in Venice's shipyard district, Arsenal Nord. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the sculpture remains on display to this day, in a wonderfully untouristed spot. Visitors report that it's difficult to find, but well worth the effort. If you're following Rick Steves' advice to visit Venice's main attractions early and late in the day to avoid crowds, this could be a peaceful mid-day excursion.

Lorenzo Quinn is a truly international artist. As previously mentioned, he's of Mexican-Italian descent (and counts Michelangelo as an inspiration), but his foundry is in Barcelona, Spain and he's represented by the Halcyon Gallery in London. As a young man, he briefly followed his father Anthony into acting, giving an award-winning performance as surrealist artist Salvador Dali in 1991's "Dali," before directing his energies to sculpture. You might have seen pictures of his other major temporary exhibitions, like "Together," a huge set of lacy, ephemeral metal hands, fingertips touching, illuminated in the sunset, the Pyramids of Giza glowing in the background. The artist's humor and whimsy comes across in "Vroom Vroom," in London (pictured), in which a giant hand holds a Fiat 500 as if it were a toy. 

Quinn's latest in his beloved Venice is a series titled "The Souls of Venice." Smaller in scale than his giant hands, these are ghostly, shimmering apparitions crafted of hollow polished metallic mesh, stationed within the grand entrance of Venice's Museum of 18th Century Art. The figures represent personages who contributed to the greatness, or infamy, of the city, like the explorer Marco Polo, the composer Vivaldi, and the legendary rake Casanova. Formerly unsung females like philosopher Elena Piscopia, the first female in the world to earn a Ph.D, also get to shine. The statues are hauntingly beautiful, and you can hear their stories by scanning a QR code with your phone.