Napoleon founded the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia in 1807, installing its gallery in the former Scuola Grande, church and convent of Santa Maria della Carità, and filled its early collection largely with paintings confiscated from suppressed churches and monasteries across the fallen Venetian Republic.
What resulted is close to a complete survey of five centuries of Venetian painting under one roof: Giovanni Bellini's serene madonnas, Giorgione's small, still-unexplained Tempest, which has kept scholars guessing at its meaning for five hundred years, and Paolo Veronese's enormous Feast in the House of Levi, originally painted as a Last Supper and renamed only after the Inquisition objected to its riot of dwarves, drunkards and dogs. Vittore Carpaccio's narrative cycles round out the collection, painted panel by panel like an unfolding comic strip. The academy of art itself moved to separate quarters in 2004, leaving the museum to occupy the entire historic complex.
