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Palazzo Cini

The Palazzo Cini Gallery is a refined museum house created in 1984. It contains a significant part of the historic art collection of a leading 20th-century Italian collector: the industrialist and philanthropist Vittorio Cini (1885– 1977).

The Gallery is laid out on two floors: the first recreates the charm of the patron’s residence with fascinating evidence of cultivated collecting in Venice, while the second hosts exhibitions and cultural events. The Gallery was established through a donation by Yana Cini Alliata di Montereale. In 1981 she presented the Fondazione Giorgio Cini with part of her father’s collections and some rooms in the Palazzo Grimani, acquired by Cini with the adjacent Palazzo Foscari in 1919 and 1920. The legacy thus preserved the vital bond between the collection and the house, now re-opened to the public thanks to the support of Assicurazioni Generali.

The donation consists of 13th- to 16th-century Tuscan paintings, sculptures and art objects, such as the outstanding group of Renaissance enamelled copper items, a group of Gothic ivories and the Cozzi porcelain table service laid out in the Neo-Rococo oval room, designed by Tomaso Buzzi. In 1989 an extraordinary collection of Ferrarese Renaissance paintings was added to the initial collection, courtesy of the Ylda Cini Guglielmi di Vulci heirs. In 2015 her heirs further enhanced the Gallery with a new group of art works and furnishings, also once in the original Vittorio Cini collection.

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What’s on

Martha Jungwirth “Herz der Finsternis”

17 April – 29 September 2024

The Palazzo Cini Gallery, an extraordinary house-cum-museum home to the masterpieces of Vittorio Cini’s own collection, reopens to the public with an exhibition dedicated to the Austrian artist Martha Jungwirth (Vienna 1940). The only woman artist among the founding members of the “Wirklichkeiten” (“Reality”) group, her works were exhibited in the 1968 Vienna Secession exhibition curated by Otto Breicha. From then on, Martha Jungwirth continued to develop an innovative visual language, characterised by the exploration of colour and incisive lines. In 2018, she received the prestigious Oskar Kokoschka Prize awarded by the Austrian state, accompanied by an extensive solo exhibition at the Albertina in Vienna; in 2020, a retrospective at the Museum Liaunig in Neuhaus celebrated the artist’s eightieth birthday, while two years later, the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf presented an extensive solo exhibition of the artist’s work. Her works are admired by several generations of artists and are now exhibited in the collections of major institutions, such as the Albertina Museum in Vienna and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Martha Jungwirth’s work draws on various sources (the human body, travel, art history, mythology as well as historical, social and political contexts), capturing internal and fleeting impulses that are recorded in her painting. Her compositions are poised between abstraction and figuration, between the unconscious and the intentional, unbound and free, committed only to their own truth. As with all her subjects, the forms remain beyond the easily identifiable, moving between the realms of the real and the imaginary, the embodied and the transcendent, and her compositions reveal themselves to the artist during the painting process. The artist’s inspiration from ancient art is exemplified by works such as In Ohne Titel, aus der Serie “Nicht mehr und nicht weniger” (2021), in which Jungwirth cites Francisco Goya (1746-1828) by naming her series after the title of the Spanish artist’s work Ni mas ni menos (1797-1798). The exhibition itinerary, which unfolds around the second floor of Palazzo Cini, will also include previously unseen paintings by the Viennese artist, inspired by the works in the Gallery itself so as to underline the relationship between her painting and the history of art.
Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, director of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s Institute of Art History, and staged with the support of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, the exhibition will be open to the public from 17 April to 29 September, every day of the week (except Tuesdays), while Palazzo Cini and its permanent collections will remain open until 13 October 2024

Eleonora Duse in La Gioconda, fotografia Byron, 1900 circa.

Eleonora Duse mito contemporaneo

28 June – 13 October 2024

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the death of Eleonora Duse (Vigevano 1858 – Pittsburgh 1924), the Institute for Theatre and Melodrama opens to the public a temporary exhibition that tells the extraordinary story of this artist.

 

The exhibition, designed for the spaces of Palazzo Cini in San Vio, aims to portray the famous actress from documents and objects that belonged to her, preserved in the Archives of the Institute for Theatre and Opera. These are unique objects, capable of testifying to the particularity of this revolutionary artist, a point of reference not only for the theater scene of the time, but also for European culture in the decades between the 19th and 20th centuries. Among them, the dresses that belonged to her and pertained to her private wardrobe will have a special relevance. These are haute couture models, perfectly preserved, which restore the charm of distant and particularly evocative years. In addition to the dress made by the Magugliani tailor’s shop, models created by the Jean Philippe Worth atelier, one of the first fashion houses active between London and Paris at the turn of the century, creations by Paul Poiret, the artist who at the beginning of the 20th century made the first form of women’s pants, and some garments made by Mariano Fortuny will be exhibited.

In addition, other precious materials will be on display in the exhibition: autographed letters from various correspondents, rare photographs showing Eleonora Duse in moments of her private life and in stage costume, and precious objects that belonged to her that give back a glimpse of her refined and original taste.

The exhibition aims to offer visitors a snapshot of the great artist who was a symbol of Italian theater in the world, through significant and extraordinary pieces from the Archives, which the Giorgio Cini Foundation’s Institute for Theater has been preserving, at the behest of the actress’s niece and other donors, for many years.

Past Exhibitions

  • Exhibition Joseph Beuys: Fine-limbed

    20 April - 2 October 2022

    The Palazzo Cini Gallery, a remarkable house museum containing masterpieces from the personal collection of the great patron of the arts Vittorio Cini, reopens to the public with an exciting dossier exhibition Joseph Beuys: Fine-limbed dedicated to the major 20th-century German artist. A painter, sculptor, performer and theorist, Joseph Beuys was one of the most influential, emblematic and multifaceted artists in the second half of the 20th century and one of the few who was truly capable of combining art and life. Beuys considered art to be the cure for society’s ills: a positive, healing force capable of awakening individual creativity, fostering political awareness and stimulating social change.

    Titled after the principal work on show, Backrest for a Fine-Limbed Person (Hare-Type) of the 20th Century AD, the exhibition will present a selection of around forty works by this master of conceptual art, whose birth centenary was celebrated in 2021. Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, director of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini Institute of Art History, and staged in collaboration with Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, the exhibition will be open from 20 April to 2 October 2022 every day except Tuesdays, thus providing members of the public with the opportunity to admire these rare works over a long period. The Palazzo Cini Gallery and its permanent collections will remain open until 21 November 2022 (www.palazzocini.it).

  • Arturo Martini, Giorgio Morandi, Filippo de Pisis. The Franca Fenga Malabotta Bequest

    01 October – 31 October 2021

    In 2020 the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s art collections were greatly enhanced thanks to a large bequest made by Franca Fenga Malabotta, widow of the well-known art critic, poet and collector from Trieste Manlio Malabotta (1907-1975), also renowned for his rich collection of paintings and graphic works by Filippo de Pisis, now in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Ferrara. The bequest includes a sizeable group of graphic works and books illustrated by major 20th-century Italian and Julian artists. Highlights include a watercolour and two etchings by Giorgio Morandi and a fine group of works by Arturo Martini, such as the splendid terracotta Ophelia (1932), a bronze Woman by the Sea (1932), the plaster cast Thirst (a bozzetto for the Finale stone sculpture of the same name, 1934), and a Still Life (oil on cardboard, 1945). The bequest presented to the Fondazione Giorgio Cini is the last step in a far-sighted strategy to find institutional homes for Malabotta’s important collection, which in 2015 had seen the donation of a large group of Triestine and Julian works to the Museo Revoltella, Trieste. One of the most important acquisitions in recent years for the Cini Institute of Art History, the bequest has considerable enriched its collection of 20th-century graphic works.

    Specifically conceived for the first floor of the Palazzo Cini Gallery, the exhibition features the works of three artists who are most representative of Malabotta’s taste and collecting
    preferences. The exhibition is also a tribute to Franca Fenga Malabotta, who recently passed away, and to her lucid and passionate intense work in bearing witness to and promoting the
    legacy of her husband Manlio, “one of the most fascinating cultural figures in 20th-century Venezia Giulia”.

  • The New Season at the Palazzo Cini Gallery

    28 May – 31 October 2021

    As usual, thanks to the contribution of Assicurazioni Generali, the Palazzo Cini Gallery at San Vio will reopen to the public from spring to autumn. This elegant house-museum contains the most important
    part of the historic art collection of Vittorio Cini, an entrepreneur, philanthropist and leading 20th-century Italian art collector. The gallery exhibits a fascinating legacy of paintings, sculptures and art objects that form a remarkable itinerary of Italian art from the 13th to the 18th century. Among the masterpieces on display that can now be admired again are the stunning series of paintings from the Florentine Renaissance, including works by Beato Angelico and Piero di Cosimo, and a group of paintings from Ferrara with works by Dosso Dossi, Cosmè Tura, Ercole de’ Roberti and other artists from the “Officina Ferrarese”, such as
    Marco Zoppo, Baldassarre d’Este, Ludovico Mazzolino and Lorenzo Costa.

     

    This year also sees the return of A Guest at the Palace. As in previous years, this involves bringing to the gallery masterpieces on loan from major Italian and international galleries with the aim of establishing visual relationships and affinities of content with the works in the Cini permanent collection. The chosen work this year is the celebrated painting of St George and the Dragon by Paolo Uccello from the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris. It will be on show in Venice as part of a reciprocal lending agreement in exchange for The Judgement of Paris by Botticelli and Workshop, which will leave the Palazzo Cini Gallery in September for the Paris exhibition Botticelli: un laboratoire de la Renaissance (10 September 2021–24 January 2022).

     

    Palazzo Cini also hosts the extended Piranesi Rome Basilico exhibition, officially opened in 2020, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, director of the Fondazione Cini Institute of Art History, with the collaboration of the Gabriele Basilico Archive.

     

    The Palazzo Cini  Gallery, the Gallerie dell’Accademia, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the Palazzo Grassi-Punta della Dogana form what is called the “Dorsoduro Museum Mile”, an amazing cultural circuit with integrated itineraries, shared communications and discounted museum entrance tickets. Created in 2015, the Dorsoduro Museum Mile welcomes visitors on a walk just over a mile long through the Dorsoduro district, between the Grand Canal and the Canale della Giudecca, providing the opportunity to admire eight centuries of world art history: from the masterpieces of Mediaeval and Renaissance Venetian painting in the Gallerie dell’Accademia to the protagonists of the contemporary art scene on display at Punta della Dogana, via the historic house-museums of Vittorio Cini and Peggy Guggenheim and the collections put together by the two great art patrons

  • IMAGINED ARCHITECTURE

    20 April – 27 August 2018

    IMAGINED ARCHITECTURE DRAWINGS FROM THE FONDAZIONE GIORGIO CINI COLLECTIONS The Galleria di Palazzo Cini opens the 2018 season by dedicating its second floor to the exhibition of a nucleus of drawings from the collection of the composer and cellist Antonio Certani: a collection of more than 5000 sheets, most of which relate to the genre of painted architecture. The exhibition, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero and the Istituto di Storia dell’Arte, arises out of the wish to return to the Palazzo Cini visitors, in the year of the Architectural Biennale, a part of the numerous drawings for illusive architecture, scenery and ornamentation that make up the collection. Sketches, plans and study copies make up a dense weft that immerses the visitor in a pathway that gives the architectural drawing a central place as ideational and design moment. From quadrature for walls and ceilings, to temporary apparatus for the rites of the community and of power, from architecture for the stage to designs for ornamentation and the decorative arts, to end with some examples of drawings for ‘real’ architecture: the result is a plunge into the genre of architectural illusionism, a combination of optical-geometrical expertise and mimesis of the pictorial ars.

  • Piranesi Rome Basilico

    20 June – 23 November 2020

    On 20 June 2020Piranesi Rome Basilico will open to the public. In the year of the Architecture Biennale, the exhibition celebrates the fascination of Rome by comparing the ancient city in Piranesi’s etchings and the contemporary capital captured in Gabriele Basilico’s photographs.

    To mark the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giambattista Piranesi (Venice, 1720 – Rome, 1778), the Fondazione Giorgio Cini is paying tribute to the great Venetian artist in the exhibition Piranesi Rome Basilico, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, director of the Institute of Art History, in collaboration with the Archivio Gabriele Basilico. From 20 June  to 23 November 2020, the second floor of the Palazzo Cini Gallery at San Vio will host a comparison of lyrical cityscapes of Rome featuring the historic etchings of Giambattista Piranesi and the modern photography of Gabriele Basilico. Visitors will thus have the chance to see a previously unshown selection of the work of the great landscape photographer, commissioned by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in 2010.

    Thanks to Assicurazioni Generali, the Gallery’s main partner since it reopened in 2014 and for many years a patron of the Fondazione Cini, the exhibition season will continue until 22 November 2020.

    Piranesi Rome Basilico returns to the figure of Piranesi as vedutista, explored in the exhibition The Arts of Piranesi, conceived by the Fondazione Cini in 2010, with an original interpretation of his views of Rome set beside the work of the contemporary landscape photographer Gabriele Basilico.

    Visitors will be able to admire some of the great symbolic landmarks of the eternal city in twenty-five original prints made in the 18th century by the Venetian engraver, selected from the complete corpus preserved in the Cini graphic art collections,  and in twenty-six views of Rome by the Milanese photographer, taken from the same viewpoint as the Piranesi etchings, including twelve not shown in the exhibition The Arts of Piranesi. Architect, Etcher, Vedutista, Designer, staged at the Fondazione Cini in 2010.

    Inspired by writer Marguerite Yourcenar’s wonderful description of Giambattista Piranesi in the early 1960s, Basilico took his camera to all the sites of Piranesi’s views to capture their extraordinary modernity.

     

    The corpus of Piranesi etchings is one of the largest graphic art collections by the Venetian artist kept in a private institution. It has been preserved intact thanks to Vittorio Cini’s far-sighted, generous decision in the 1960s to acquire it as a whole for the Institute of Art History, where it is still the subject of study today.

     

    Piranesi Rome Basilico will not only be an enthralling exhibition for the general public. It will also provide an opportunity to visit the Palazzo Cini and explore a hitherto partly unknown aspect of the large Fondazione Cini collections in the fascinating, lively setting of a house museum.

     

    Published by Contrasto in 2019, the catalogue is edited by the Institute of Art History and is conceived as a homage by the Fondazione Cini to the great photographer who died in 2013. It brings together all the photos taken by Basilico for The Arts of Piranesi project and includes writings by Luca Massimo Barbero, Mario Bevilacqua, Michele De Lucchi, Pasquale Gagliardi, Alessandro Martoni and Roberta Valtorta, plus a conversation between Gabriele Basilico and film director Amos Gitai.

    The Fondazione Giorgio Cini and its Institute of Art History are also taking part in the Piranesi celebrations by lending sixteen precious prints of Piranesi’s Prisons of Invention, an integral part of the Foundation’s graphic art collections. The prints will be shown from 4 April to 27 July 2020 in the exhibition Giambattista Piranesi. Visions of a Timeless Architect, curated by Chiara Casarin and Pierluigi Panza at the Palazzo Sturm in Bassano del Grappa.

  • Léon Bakst.

    Narcisse, Ballets Russes, coreografia di Michel Fokine, 1911. © St Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music
    Symbol of the Ballets Russes

    The exhibition, curated by Natalia Metelitsa e Maria Ida Biggi, explores the career of the renowned Russian artist and set and costume designer, who made a reputation thanks to his innovative creations for Sergei Diaghilev’s celebrated ballet company. The result of a joint project by the Cini Institute of Theatre and Opera and the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music, which has the largest collection in the world of Bakst’s set and costume designs, the exhibition is being staged in collaboration with the Centre for Studies on the Arts of Russia (CSAR) at Ca’Foscari University, Venice and is part of the “Russian Season in Italy”, organised by the Russian Ministry of Culture. The exhibition itinerary documents a large part of Bakst’s  artistic production: after some little-known early works for productions such as Marius Petipa’s Le Coeur de la Marquise (1902) and some Greek tragedies (Euripides’ Hippolyte and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonna and Antigone; 1902-1904), the heart of the exhibition features the celebrated creations for the Ballets Russes, including those for Cléopâtre(1909), L’oiseau de feu (1910), Carnaval (1910), Narcisse (1911), Le Dieu bleu (1912), and Daphnis et Chloé (1912). In addition to these materials, there is a selection of costume designs mainly created between 1910 and 1911 for ballets such as Thaïs, La TraviataFaust, Martyre de St. Sébastien and Manon Lescaut. The exhibition is completed by a rich series of photographs and original costumes, a fundamental aid in reconstructing the much-acclaimed artist’s multifaceted activities. Léon Bakst (1866-1924) was educated in St.Petersburg and Paris. With Sergei Diaghilev and Alexandre Benois, he founded Mir iskusstva, the magazine in which he published his first graphic art works. In 1902, he began working as a set and costume designer for the St. Petersburg imperial theatres. Albeit with rifts and reconciliations, his collaboration with the Ballets Russes lasted from 1909 almost throughout his career.


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  • The Battle between Carnival and Feast

    Adrian Ghenie, Figure with Dog, 2019, Oil on canvas,
    250 x 200 cm. Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London · Paris · Salzburg © Adrian Ghenie
    19 April – 18 November 2019

    During the 2019 seasonal opening of the permanent exhibition at the Palazzo Cini Gallery, a contemporary art show dedicated to Adrian Ghenie will also be staged. Produced in collaboration with the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, the exhibition will be installed on the second floor of the house-museum in Campo San Vio. Around ten paintings have been specifically created for this project. Inspired by Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Battle between Carnival and Lent, the title also suggests a link with the city of Venice through the reference to Carnival. In his approach to the series, the artist thus clearly looks to tradition but does so without forgoing an interest in contemporary events. Characterised by an experimental use of colour with strong physical material connotations, Ghenie’s paintings depict personalities whose actions have influenced and continue to influence the course of the history of the world. Born in Baia Mare, Romania, in 1977, Adrian Ghenie currently lives and works in Berlin. His show in the Romanian pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale brought him international renown and his works are now on display in major museums and galleries, such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Tate Modern, London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The bilingual (Italian and English) exhibition catalogue includes an introductory conversation between the director of the Institute of Art History, Luca Massimo Barbero, and the artist.

  • Lyda Borelli: A Leading Lady of the 20th Century

    Lyda Borelli in Salomè, 1910 circa. Fotografia Varischi e Artico. Siae-Burcardo, Roma
    September 1 - November 15 2017
    01 September – 15 November 2017

    This exhibition is a key part of the series of events aimed at reviving interest in the actress Lyda Borelli (1887-1959). Entitled Lyda Borelli: A Leading Lady of the 20th Century, the show has been curated by Maria Ida Biggi, the director of the Fondazione Cini Institute of Theatre and Opera, and installed in the elegant setting of the house-museum of the Palazzo Cini at San Vio, now open again thanks to a partnership with Assicurazioni Generali.

    Through a remarkable series of photographs and rare archive documents, the exhibition tells the story of one of the most fascinating Italian stars of the early 20th century, her great achievements on the stage in Italy and worldwide, and her enormous success in cinema. Daughter of the actors Napoleone Borelli and Cesira Banti, Lyda was already often on the stage as child, and she officially debuted alongside Virginia Reiter in 1901. In 1903, she joined Virgilio Talli’s company and, until she retired in 1918, she worked with the greatest actors of the day and was the greatly acclaimed leading lady in plays by writers such as Gabriele D’Annunzio, Oscar Wilde and Sem Benelli. Her image as a theatre actress paved the way to her status as an Art Nouveau icon of style and gracefulness created by her subsequent film roles that were enormously popular with wider audiences.

    The exhibition project, organised in agreement with Lyda Borelli’s heirs, has been produced in collaboration with institutions such as the SIAE-Biblioteca e Raccolta Teatrale del Burcardo, Rome; Fratelli Alinari. Fondazione per la Storia della Fotografia, Florence; ICCD – Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, Rome; Biblioteca e Archivio storico di Casa Lyda Borelli, Bologna; and the Fondazione Cineteca Italiana, Milan.

  • Rediscovered Masterpieces from the Vittorio Cini Collection

    08 April – 15 November 2016

    Rediscovered Masterpieces from the Vittorio Cini Collection is a unique opportunity for both the general public and scholars to explore a significant and lesser-known part of the extraordinary collection put together by Vittorio Cini.

    Visitors will be able to admire the Group of Veneto paintings, some exceptionally on show to the public for the first time, which give an idea of the qualitative standards of one of the most important art collections in 20th-century Italy.

    Although starting froma predilection shaped by Berenson, in keeping with the principles and trends of the time for the art of the Italian Primitives andthe Renaissance (from Guglielmo Veneziano to Carlo Crivelli, Jacopo Bellini and Bartolomeo Montagna), the exhibition highlights how Vittorio CIni also took an interest in later centuries, from the 16th century of Titian and Lorenzo Lotto to the 18th century of Giambattista Tiepolo, Canaletto and the Guardi.

    A work deserving a special place on this itinerary of Veneto paintings is Titian’s enigmatic Saint George Slaying the Dragon. An intriguing and problematic work for its history, critical interpretation and attribution, it was probably a panel of an altarpiece commissioned from Titian by the Venetian Republic in the second decade of the 16th century. In the nineteenth century the work was attributed to Giorgione while in the early decades of the 20th century it was assigned first to Palma Vecchio and then to Giorgione again. It has only recently been firmly attributed to the great Titian.

    Four sublime Capricci by Francesco Guardi and two small bozzetti for altarpieces by Giambattista Tiepolo will be on show in dialogue with the works by Canaletto. Together with two of Antonio Guardi’s celebrated turcherie (Turkish-inspired interiors), three of his albums of drawings will also be presented for the first time. Known as the Fasti veneziani, the fifty-eight sheets illustrate events and festivities in the history of Venice. The graphic works are of a remarkably high standard and characterised by a style that reflects Guardi’s Rococo vein.

  • Exhibition Vik Muniz “Afterglow: Pictures of Ruins”

    21 April – 24 July 2017

    This year’s season of art at the Palazzo Cini Gallery begins with Afterglow: Pictures of Ruins, an exhibition of works by the celebrated contemporary artist and photographer Vik Muniz, curated by the Institute of Art
    History director, Luca Massimo Barbero.
    Staged in collaboration with Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, the exhibition features photographs and a glass sculpture produced by the artist in a process involving the re-elaboration in a personal key of familiar works in the collective imagination. In this case he has been inspired by paintings in the great Venice lagoon tradition, and he has reinterpreted works actually shown at San Vio during the 2016 exhibition entitled Rediscovered Masterpieces from the Vittorio Cini Collection, as well as some works permanently on show in the historic collection. He will thus also forge a link between the first and the second floors in the gallery. Muniz simulates the brushstrokes of the celebrated paintings by using cuttings of illustrations reproduced in art books. He carefully selects not only the colour values but also the images: glued together they produce the tactile, physical effect of an impastoed surface. In the wake of the tradition of the 17th- and 18th-century artists, Muniz ingeniously recombines various elements to reconstruct images that appeal to the visual subconscious and invite viewers to explore further.

  • 18th-century Venetian drawings from the Fondazione Giorgio Cini

    19 September - 15 November 2015

    To promote and make better known the wealth and value of its graphic art collections, the Fondazione Cini Institute of Art History is also showing a rich selection of 18th-century Veneto drawings from the Fondazione Cini Drawings and Prints Cabinet, again on the second floor of the Palazzo Cini, until 15 November 2015. The fascinating itinerary includes splendid works by Canaletto, Guardi, Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, Giambattista Piazzetta, Ludovico Dorigny, Antonio Pellegrini, Giambattista Pittoni, Giuseppe Zais and Bernardino Bison. Most of the drawings were previously in the Fiocco and Fissore Pozzi collections. The exhibition will also feature a large watercolour View of San Giorgio Maggiore, attributed to Francesco Guardi, and a selection of portraits depicting the variegated world of 18th-century Venice from the album of caricatures by Anton Maria Zanetti, gifted to the Foundation by Vittorio Cini in 1968.

    A further attraction in the drawings exhibition is a marvellous gouache by Francesco Guardi, depicting a striking architectural capriccio (c. 1760). The work has been lent by the Musée Jacquemart-André di Parigi in exchange for the loan of Pontormo’s Portrait of Two Friends from the Cini Gallery for an exhibition on 16th-century Florentine portraiture (Florence. Portraits à la cour des Médicis, Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris; 11 September 2015-25 January 2016).

  • Titian and Veronese. The portraits of Daniele Barbaro

    19 September - 15 November 2015

    In mid-16th-century Venice, when the sumptuous patrician palaces were being filled with rich art collections, Roman antiquities and painted decorations, Daniele Barbaro led a systematic renewal in the world of knowledge (languages, techniques, sciences and arts). A major cultural figure of the day, responsible for Venetian re-editions of Vitruvius’ De Architectura, he established a new humanist and scientific outlook in the ars edificatoria (the art of building). As part of the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of the birth of Barbaro, promoted by the Veneto Region and the Fondazioni Giorgio Cini, the salone on the second floor of the Palazzo Cini – in concomitance with the exhibition of 18th-century Veneto drawings from the Cini collections – will host two unrivalled masterpieces of 16th-century Venetian portraiture: paintings of Barbaro by Titian and Paolo Veronese, exceptionally loaned from the Museo del Prado, Madrid, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and on show together for the first time. The painting by Titian portrays Barbaro in a three-quarter pose, aged about thirty, with the introspective gaze of a scholar (c. 1545). Veronese’s portrait from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, on the other hand, depicts him as an older man (1560-61), dressed in clerical vestments (in 1550 he had been made Patriarch of Aquileia).

    To complement the event, the Fondazione Cini Institute of Art History has organised a day of lectures on Daniele Barbaro and his cultural context to be given by leading experts in the field on 4 November 2015.

Info and tickets

Where we are
Palazzo Cini,
Campo San Vio,
Dorsoduro 864 Venice

Contact
palazzocini@cini.it

Information
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