VENICE.- An exceptional exhibition of Veneto masterpieces once owned by Vittorio Cini opened the 2016 season at the Palazzo Cini. The Fondazione Cini pays homage to the great patron of the arts by presenting the Veneto paintings from his collection together to the public for the first time.

Some absolute masterpieces, never previously seen together, from the personal collection of Vittorio Cini, including paintings by Titian, Lotto, Guardi, Canaletto and Tiepolo are on show to the public for the first time in the same selection from 8 April to 15 November 2016 on the second floor of the Palazzo Cini Gallery at San Vio, the house museum, once the residence of the great patron.

Thanks to the partnership between the Cini Foundation and Generali, Palazzo Cini re-opens to the public until 15 November 2016. Generali has been a supporting partner of the Cini Foundation for many years, in the belief that fostering contact with art, music and literature is a way to encourage the development of the community.

Conceived by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini Institute of Art History, directed by Luca Massimo Barbero, the exhibition itinerary gives an idea of the quality of one of the most important 20th-century historic art collections through a selection of around thirty masterpieces. They enable us to gain a better understanding of the taste of Cini as a collector. With the aid of illustrious advisers such as Bernard Berenson, Federico Zeri and Giuseppe Fiocco, he acquired works by some of the most representative artists in the Veneto school from the 14th to the 18th centuries.

Veneto painting of the 14th and early 15th centuries is represented in the exhibition by several artists, from Guglielmo Veneziano to Nicolò di Pietro, the Master of the Coronation and Michele Giambono. The work on show by Giambono, whose refined art characterised the climax of the late Gothic in Venice (his celebrated Saint Christopher can be seen in the church of San Trovaso), is the remarkable panel with Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata.

The Renaissance is introduced, on the other hand, by Carlo Crivelli and his splendid Speyer Madonna, a good example of the nervous, incisive original style of the ingenious Venetian artist. In this section, in addition to works by Cima da Conegliano, Bernardo Parentino, Giovanni Mansueti and Benedetto Diana, there is an outstanding Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Francis (c. 1485) by Bartolomeo Montagna from Vicenza. Although this key work for the poetics of Montagna, who trained by following the examples of Mantegna, Bellini and Antonello da Messina, is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of the day, it is still little known. The exhibition thus offers a unique opportunity to admire and study it close up.

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.
One section of the exhibition is devoted to 16th-century Veneto portraiture with a small group of extraordinary male portraits by Bartolomeo Veneto and Bernardino Licinio. But in terms of charm and fame the outstanding work is the beautiful Portrait of a Gentleman (possibly Fioravante degli Azzoni Avogadro) by Lorenzo Lotto – one of the real gems in the collection.

The lion’s share of the works in the exhibition, however, are from the 18th century – a group of masterpieces by the leading artists of that “golden age” of Venetian painting – Canaletto, Giovanni Antonio and Francesco Guardi and Tiepolo – revealing unexpected aspects of Cini’s intelligent collecting and taste. There are two particularly admirable Capricci by Canaletto. Large-sized canvases, they are considered to be the artist’s most celebrated youthful vedute lyrically evoking a world of fantasy: ideal views bathed in warm light with dilapidated but still majestic classical ruins in an imaginary Venice.

Four sublime Capricci by Francesco Guardi and two small bozzetti for altarpieces by Giambattista Tiepolo is 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 also are being 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. We find the same taste in his three large paintings that originally decorated the ceiling of the Palazzo Zulian at San Felice. On show again for the first time in many years, these works – Vulcan (Fire), Nettuno (Water) and Cybele (Earth) – are from around 1757. Their fluid, scintillating brushwork place them among the most brilliant examples of Venetian painting for decorative purposes.

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. The exhibition thus not only provides the chance for the public to admire the paintings but above all it will stimulate study and research and so fuel the critical debate among specialists, who will be able to see some of these paintings for the first time. The exhibition is actually part of a “research workshop” on the art collections of Vittorio Cini; the first stage will be completed with the publication of the scholarly catalogue of the Palazzo Cini Gallery.