Treasures of Venice

For the 70th anniversary of the creation of the Giorgio Cini Foundation, the Hôtel de Caumont offers a trip to Venice presenting masterpieces from the Cini collection, one of the most important collections of ancient Italian art.

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 the invaluable advice of prestigious art historians have enabled him, in the space of fifty years, to form an exceptional collection for its quality and for the variety of techniques and types of objects: Venetian porcelains and French ivories, miniatures, finely decorated volumes, sculptures, engravings, drawings, 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 also presents contemporary creations in dialogue with the collection. These creations by the artists Ettore Spalletti and Vik Muniz, originally made for being exhibited in the Palazzo Cini Gallery, prove that the Cini collection is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists today.

The work Madonna and Child surrounded by saints and angels with a devotee by Fra Filippo Lippi had to leave the exhibition prematurely in order to be shown at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, as part of the exhibition "Donatello. The Renaissance". We apologise for the inconvenience.

Exhibition organized with