The Casa d'Oro (Ca' d'Oro) was built between 1420 and 1434 for Marino Contarini, the procurator of St Mark's. Its construction signalled a move in Venetian architecture towards a more decorative and florid form of Gothic expression. Detailed documentation of the building process survives which indicates that the only underlying concept for the design was Contarini's conception of the building as a showpiece. The work preserved elements of its predecessor on this site, the Veneto-Byzantine Palazzo Zeno, despite their antiquated style. Construction was carried out by Matteo Raverti, a Milanese sculptor with Lombard collaborators, and the Venetian stonemasons Giovanni and Bartolomeo Bon the Elder. The polychrome and gilded decoration of the façade was carried out by the French painter Jean Charlier, whose adornment of the façade's sculptural details led to the building's name. From the sixteenth century the building was successively remodelled by a series of owners, and by the early eighteenth century was approaching dereliction. In 1846 it was in the hands of the ballerina Marie Taglioni, for whom it had been bought by a Russian prince, Alexander Troubetzkou. During this time it underwent severe restoration including removal of its staircase and Bartolemeo Bon's wellhead of 1427-8. In 'The Venetian Index' appended to the third volume of The Stones of Venice, Ruskin describes it as a 'noble pile of very quaint Gothic once superb in general effect but now destroyed by restorations' (11.370). Earlier in 'The Lamp of Power' he describes its quatrefoils as a corrupted version of the common Venetian form ( Works, 8.132), and in The Stones of Venice he refers to the gilded decoration of its parapets ( Works, 10.283), a connection with the reference in Modern Painters. Ruskin's speaks of drawing details of the building as it was demolished before him:
You cannot imagine what an unhappy day I spent yesterday before the Casa d'Oro vainly attempting to draw it while workmen were hammering it down before my face. ( Shapiro, Ruskin in Italy p. 209)
Ruskin describes the restoration of the column capitals thus: 'The old capitals looked like clusters of leaves, the modern ones like kneaded masses of dough with holes in them' ( Works, 11.11n). The building was subsequently restored by Giorgioni Franchetti in 1894 with another restoration programme being commenced in the 1970s. It houses Franchetti's collection of arts and antiquities donated by him, with the building, to the Venetian state in 1916 together with works from the Accademia and other state collections.