A Bibliographical Repertory of Italian Private Collections

ISBN 88-7305-659-8

A curator in the Department of European Painting in the Metropolitan
Museum, New York, Elizabeth E. Gardner began collecting biographical
information and bibliographies of Italian collections as early as 1946.
In this venture she took special care over the history and provenance
of the paintings owned by the Metropolitan. The archives that were
being built up – still unique in their kind and already consisting in
1973 of around 10,000 entries for the Italian collections – turned out
to be of key importance for research, leading to a series of catalogues
printed by the museum, edited together with Federico Zeri and published
by Neri Pozza Editore.
Ms Gardner presented the original manuscript
index cards to the Cini Foundation Institute for Art History for the
purposes of creating a new research tool for scholars of Italian
collecting. After her death, the Institute promoted a five-volume
publication of her work. The entries have been updated and organised in
the form of a bio-bibliographic dictionary, thus creating a repertory
of art collectors in Italy from the 15th century to the present day, as
recorded in the main literary sources, archive documents, and
catalogues for exhibitions, museums and sales. Each volume is complete
with a Bibliography and Indices of the artists and people cited

Information
e-mail: ufficio.editoriale@cini.it