Jacopo Guarana. The palace was the site of further celebrations in 1759, when Aurelio Rezzonico was elected Procurator of San Marco, and in 1762, when Ludovico Rezzonico was elected to the same position. For three nights, the facades and interiors of the palace were lit with torches and candles in celebration. Upon his election as Pope, Carlo Rezzonico transferred a large part of the family art collection from Venice to Rome. 19th-20th century- decline and revival Fifty years after the completion of the palace, in 1810, the last member of the Venetian branch of the Rezzonicos, cardinal Abbondio of Pisa, died, bringing an end to the family line. The palace nearly became a Jesuit College, but went instead through several families, and in 1832 to Carlo Pindemonte, the grandson of a Piedomontese poet and political figure, Ippolito Pindemonte. Pindemonte sold all the furnishings and art collections of the palazzo. Only the frescos remained in situ. In 1837, Pindemonte sold the empty building to Count Ladislao Zelinsky, who in turn rented the palazzo to the Baron von Bülow, then to count Zichj Cerner. From 1840 to 1857, it was rented to the Duke of Modena and his family, which included Don Carlo, the Duke of Madrid, the pretender to the Spanish throne. Beginning in about 1850, the second floor of the palace was rented by the antiquarian and art dealer Jacobo Querci della Rovere, who used it as a gallery to sell paintings by Rubens, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Canaletto, and other old masters. In the 1880s, it became the home of the painter Robert Barrett Browning, whose father Robert Browning, the poet, died in his apartment on the mezzanine floor in 1889. At this time, the American portrait painter John Singer Sargent also had a studio in the palazzo. In 1906 Browning received an offer from the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, to buy the building, but sold it instead to Count , a deputy of the Italian parliament and a collector of modern art. The Palazzo became the setting for spectacular costume balls, celebrations by torchlight and candlelight, and concerts. American songwriter and composer Cole Porter rented Ca' Rezzonico for $4,000 a month in the 1920s. Porter engaged 50 gondoliers and employed a troupe of high-rope walkers to "perform in a blaze of colored lights". The global depression of the 1930s brought an end to Minerbi's funds and extravagance, and he sought