Review: the Venezianico Redentore Bellanotte

I’ve never been to Venice, so I’m ill equipped to comment on how accurate the representation of St. Mark’s Square is on the dial of the new Venezianico Redentore Bellanotte, perhaps the brand’s most ambitious watch to date. What I am prepared to say, however, is that the new watch is impressive, charming, and full of little surprising details. And while it’s ultimately not a watch I’d personally wear day to day, it’s full of individual elements that I really love, and I’ve come away from it genuinely impressed at what Venezianico is capable of producing at what frankly feels like a made up price point. The fact that this watch comes in at under $1,000 is honestly kind of insane. 

Let’s back up a bit, though, because Venezianico is a brand that’s still new enough and small enough that they might require an old-fashioned introduction before we get to the watch at hand. As you may have guessed, Venezianico is an Italian brand, founded by brothers Alberto and Alessandro Morelli in 2017. They have a varied collection that includes watches across sport and dress categories, but they’re tied together by design elements inspired by the city of Venice, filtered through a modern design sensibility with little touches of classicism thrown in. The brand prides itself on its engineering acumen and has experimented quite liberally with materials, finding interesting uses for forged carbon, tungsten, mother-of-pearl, and aventurine in watches where you wouldn’t normally find them. But there are little Renaissance touches everywhere – the brand’s logo, for instance, is the cross found in the historic clock tower at St. Mark’s Square.

While the Italian watch community, particularly Italian dealers of vintage watches, have had an outsized impact on watch culture over the last several decades, Italy does not have a robust watchmaking history. So Venezianico’s stated goal of using their country and their city as inspiration gives them a lot of freedom to make watches that are not necessarily bogged down by any particular tradition. Their watches can give you a faint whiff of Italian flair and style that’s hard to describe, or they can be hyper-specific. That latter category is where the Redentore Bellanotte finds itself. 

What we have here, then, is a highly detailed depiction of an evening scene in St. Mark’s Square that incorporates a variety of materials in a complex dial construction. It’s a big swing, for sure, and feels inspired by artisanal, high end creations from some of the oldest names in Swiss watchmaking. The scene on the dial depicts the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore in the background, with the Doge’s Palace taking up the left hand side of the dial. The Lion of Venice, which in real life is perched atop a tall granite column in the Square, is depicted on the Redentore Bellanotte as rising dramatically into the time-telling field, an off-center miniature mother-of-pearl dial. Surrounding the mother-of-pearl disc where the time is read are circular apertures under which we can see a satin finished disc that is meant to evoke fireworks, and all of this is set against an aventurine backdrop that sets a starry night time scene.

In short, there’s a lot going on here, and Venezianico deserves a ton of credit for pulling off something coherent with so many variables at play. The degree of difficulty in manufacturing here must be nearly off the charts. 

My reaction to the Redentore Bellanotte after spending some time with it is somewhat curious, as I find it to be very nice looking, almost to the point where we can state that as an objective fact. The composition of the scene is visually appealing, looks proportional on the dial, and under a loupe there’s a ton of detail that is tough to glean with the naked eye. And I’m personally a very big fan of all of the individual elements used. I’ve come to really enjoy mother-of-pearl as of late, and my love of aventurine has also been well documented. But I don’t find myself connecting to this watch emotionally. 

And I think that’s the key for this watch, and for Venezianico in a more general way. When you base your design language on a place, you’re asking collectors to come on a journey with you that they may or may not truly understand. For people who have a strong connection to St. Mark’s or to Venice, this watch will mean something to them that it doesn’t for me. Sometimes, a very specific design idea can ring true with a collector even when they have zero connection to the inspiration. For example, my favorite Tudor Pelagos FXD, by far, is the one they did in partnership with the Alinghi Red Bull Racing team. I’m about as far removed from the America’s Cup as you can get, I just really like the dial color and tone of the case. I have no doubt that the Redentore Bellanotte could have a similar pull with watch lovers who are just struck by the aesthetic and have never been to Italy, but surely a genuine connection would be helpful. 

Where this watch succeeds, I think, is in Venezianico throwing down the gauntlet, and showing the watch community what can be accomplished at a $700 price point. When I posted this watch to my personal Instagram, I received a lot of DMs (relative to the normal rate of DMs, anyway) commenting on just how nice it looked. It’s worth noting, too, that these DMs came from brand owners and colleagues in the watch media space, so there’s an element of this brand, and maybe this specific watch, having an “if you know, you know” quality to it. 

But I also received messages from watch collectors who were not familiar with Venezianico, and the question of cost immediately came up. Universally, everyone was fairly shocked when I came back with a three figure number. So, at least on a surface level, the watch gives off an heir of quality and refinement. 

It’s not just the use of materials, though, that makes this watch impressive. Let’s be honest: we can all find cheaply made watches made to less than exacting standards using mother-of-pearl, aventurine, carbon fiber, and all of the other materials that Venezianico uses throughout their collection. But I don’t think you’d be able to find watches at this price point that are quite this complex in their execution and construction. Consider the separate layers that have to be precisely positioned on the dial side. We have a base layer of a satin finished disc (the fireworks), over which the aventurine layer and mother-of-pearl dial are positioned, and then a very thin rhodium plated depiction of St. Mark’s Square. Remember, though, that the Lion of Venice intersects with the mother-of-pearl dial, which means it has to be positioned such that the hands clear it as they rotate. We are talking about incredibly small tolerances here, with a case that measures 11.5mm tall. 

A note, here, about mother-of-pearl. This was a blind spot for me for years. I had always dismissed the material as excessively feminine given that with a handful of notable exceptions, it is most often used in watchmaking in designs specifically targeted at women. I also, frankly, had never seen really great mother-of-pearl until a few years into working full time in the watch industry. Recently, though, I’ve developed a real taste for it, and I purchased a watch with a mother-of-pearl dial unlike any I’ve ever seen. The material, which is produced by some molluscs as an inner shell and also forms pearls used in jewelry applications, has a natural iridescence that I find incredibly beautiful. And, it turns out, there are many varieties and colors of mother-of-pearl, just as there are many molluscs that naturally create it. 

The small mother-of-pearl dial on the Bellanotte is very subtle, and the coloration is a very traditional white. At some angles, you’d be forgiven for not even realizing what it is, but at others, and in the right light, the iridescent, multi-color effect comes through. It feels like this material and others like it are having a bit of a moment – there are more stone and exotic dials on the market, it seems, than at any time since I’ve been involved in the hobby. This is a very positive step, I think, because there are so many creative ways these materials can be used. Venezianico deserves credit for being at the forefront of the trend, as they’ve been incorporating mother-of-pearl and other natural materials into sports watches for some time. 

On the wrist, I found the Bellanotte to be very easy to wear. At 40mm in diameter it has good presence and is big enough so that it’s easy to get the full impact of the dial, but not so big as to be unwieldy. If this watch were 42mm or larger, I fear that it would have souvenir shop vibes. That’s avoided by keeping the case compact, subtly reinforcing the skill involved in combining all the dial elements within such tight parameters. Case finishing is nice, but not showy, with satin finished case walls and a polished, gently sloping bezel, with a matching polished finish on the tops of the lugs. This, of course, is not a watch you buy for the case, and I think the best way to describe it would be perfectly adequate in that it succeeds in its primary purpose of not letting down (or overwhelming) the dial. 

Similarly, the movement powering the Bellanotte recedes into the background. It’s a Seiko NH05A, an automatic caliber chosen for its thinness. It hand winds and hacks, and the running seconds hand has been removed but the date position has not, so the crown does have a somewhat annoying “phantom date” position when you pull it out to the first position. This is ultimately a very minor issue, and I think can be easily forgiven given the cost of the watch and everything else it offers, but is worth pointing out. 

Sometimes we get a watch in for review that is genuinely special and impressive that doesn’t quite land with us personally, and I think this is one of those times. The beauty, value, and ingenuity that can be found in the Venezianico Redentore Bellanote are absolutely undeniable, but the story behind it is too specific for me. That said, the brand is on my radar in a way that they haven’t been before, and now that I know what they’re capable of, my expectations for future releases will be that much higher. And like other brands that seem to offer a lot for a little, the question of what they could potentially do for two or three times the price naturally comes into play as well. For now, the Bellanotte is a worthy demonstration of what Venezianico is capable of, and perhaps represents a tease at what might be coming in the future. Venezianico