On the occasion of the 70th anniversary, in 2021, of the creation of the Giorgio Cini Foundation, the Hôtel de Caumont Art Centre in Aix-en-Provence will take its visitors on a journey to Venice by presenting a selection of the masterpieces from the Cini Collection, one of the most prestigious collections of ancient Italian art. Presented for the first time outside Italy, a selection of 70 works from the fourteenth to eighteenth century will represent the collection’s most signifificant aesthetic and cultural themes.
The paintings, sculptures, drawings, and precious objects presented at the Hôtel de Caumont in the winter of 2020 are part of one of the most prestigious collections of Italian art, from the fourteenth to eighteenth century, assembled by the businessman and philanthropist Vittorio Cini (Ferrara, 1885-1977, Venice). In 1951, he founded the Giorgio Cini Foundation, an internationally renowned research and training centre, to honour the memory of his son, prematurely deceased. His insatiable curiosity and invaluable advice from prestigious art historians enabled him, over a period of around fifty years, to assemble an exceptional collection both in terms of its quality and the diversity of the techniques and object typologies. The collection comprises Venetian porcelains and French ivories, miniatures, finely ornamented volumes, sculptures, engravings, drawings, furniture objects, and paintings on wood.
Today, the Cini Collection is held in the Galleria di Palazzo Cini, the collector’s former residence on the Grand Cana, and in the main head office of the Giorgio Cini Foundation, on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore.
In addition to works by the great Tuscan masters-such as Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, and Piero di Cosimo - and Venetian masters, such as Lorenzo and Giandomenico Tiepolo, the exhibition is presenting masterpieces of the Ferrara Renaissance. Complemented by a selection of sculptures, enamels, and ivories, and a selection of drawings and illuminations, the exhibition reflects the entire technical and stylistic diversity of a period during which Italian art flourished, and the refined taste of one of the leading Italian art collectors of the twentieth century.
The exhibition will also present contemporary works that complement the works in the collection. The works by the artists Ettore Spalletti and Vik Muniz, which were originally designed to be exhibited in the Galleria di Palazzo Cini, show that the Cini Collection is an endless source of inspiration for today’s artists.
