Trésors de Venise. La collection Cini

By Art History

In 2021 the Fondazione Giorgio Cini celebrated its seventieth anniversary with a series of events dedicated to its founder, Vittorio Cini. His collections and role as a patron of the arts, a “humanist and philanthropist”, were the subject of the exhibition Trésors de Venise. La Collection Cini (19 November 2021 – 27 March 2022), jointly organised by the Foundation and the Parisien cultural institution Culturespaces at the Hôtel de Cau- mont-Centre d’Art, an 18th-century hôtel particulier in Aix-en-Provence. The exhibition featured a highly varied array of ninety-five works: paintings (including masterpieces from the Palazzo Cini Gallery by artists such as Lippi, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Piero di Cosimo and Pontormo), sculptures, objets d’art, drawings, prints, miniatures, illuminated manuscripts and illustrated books. The exhibition explored Vittorio Cini’s taste and very diverse interests and influences while reconstructing the social and cultural background to his collecting.

In essays by Luca Massimo Barbero, Daniela Ferretti, Alessandro Martoni and Maurizio Reberschak, this catalogue published by Hazan charts the stages in his long life and his successful career as an entrepreneur in 20th-century Italy. It then focuses on his role from the 1930s to the 1960s