From Pisanello to Tiepolo

In accordance with the express wish of our founder Richard, VIIth Viscount Fitzwilliam (d. 1816), one of the major goals of the Fitzwilliam Museum is to broaden knowledge. This a serious, if not solemn, commitment for the museum’s board, and it is why we were quite pleased to accept the Giorgio Cini Foundation’s request to show a selection of our Veneto drawings in Venice. We hope the works we have chosen will be instructive for many viewers and that the exhibition will be a joyous occasion, perhaps even a surprise for anyone who is not yet aware of the wealth of our collections in this field.
This event clearly demonstrates the Fitzwilliam’s international character. We recently sent an exhibition of French drawings to France, one of Romney drawings to Lubiana and another of musical manuscripts to Zurich. In the area of drawing alone, we are currently planning two other exhibitions, one on Burne-Jones, in France, and another, in be held in Germany, on Dutch works on paper.
The exhibition also provides the opportunity to underscore our increasing indebtedness to our benefactors, who, from our founder on, have always compensated for the scarce financial resources available for acquisitions and, to our good fortune, continue to surprise us with their benevolence and generosity.
The third point this show brings to light is the fundamental role of private research centres, such as the Giorgio Cini Foundation, in mounting exhibitions of this sort, with everything this means in terms of culture and access to new audiences. Sad but true, the Fitzwilliam Museum does not have funds for exhibitions, and it is only through collaborations of this sort that we are able to make the breadth of our collections known abroad.
This time around the weight of the task fell on the shoulders of David Scrase, Conservatore of the Department of Paintings, Drawings and Prints, who is now working on the general catalogue of our Italian drawings. We are most grateful to him and to the Giorgio Cini Foundation for having made this initiative possible.