VENICE.- The autumn season at Palazzo Cini at San Vio opened on 19 September with the arrival of some fascinating art works. Recently refurbished with the support of Assicurazioni Generali, the second floor of the museum-house is the stage for an important tribute to the Venetian humanist Daniele Barbaro (1514-1570). A highly refined patron and leading light in intellectual discussions in the cultural circles of the Serenissima, Barbaro commissioned major works from prominent artists, such as Palladio and Veronese. Moreover, Barbaro was officially celebrated in 2014 thanks to an initiative by the Veneto Region for the 500th anniversary of his birth. At the same time, the second floor also hosts an exhibition of 18th-century Veneto drawings from the Cini collections with works by Canaletto, Guardi, Tiepolo, Piazzetta and Zanetti.

In mid-16th-century Venice, when the sumptuous patrician palaces were being filled with rich art collections, Roman antiquities and painted decorations, Daniele Barbaro led a systematic renewal in the world of knowledge (languages, techniques, sciences and arts). A major cultural figure of the day, responsible for Venetian re-editions of Vitruvius’ De Architectura, he established a new humanist and scientific outlook in the ars edificatoria (the art of building). As part of the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of the birth of Barbaro, promoted by the Veneto Region and the Fondazioni Giorgio Cini, the salone on the second floor of the Palazzo Cini – in concomitance with the exhibition of 18th-century Veneto drawings from the Cini collections – hosts two unrivalled masterpieces of 16th-century Venetian portraiture: paintings of Barbaro by Titian and Paolo Veronese, exceptionally loaned from the Museo del Prado, Madrid, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and on show together for the first time. The painting by Titian portrays Barbaro in a three-quarter pose, aged about thirty, with the introspective gaze of a scholar (c. 1545). Veronese’s portrait from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, on the other hand, depicts him as an older man (1560-61), dressed in clerical vestments (in 1550 he had been made Patriarch of Aquileia).

To complement the event, the Fondazione Cini Institute of Art History has organised a day of lectures on Daniele Barbaro and his cultural context to be given by leading experts in the field on 4 November 2015.

To promote and make better known the wealth and value of its graphic art collections, the Fondazione Cini Institute of Art History is also showing a rich selection of 18th-century Veneto drawings from the Fondazione Cini Drawings and Prints Cabinet, again on the second floor of the Palazzo Cini, until 15 November 2015. The fascinating itinerary includes splendid works by Canaletto, Guardi, Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, Giambattista Piazzetta, Ludovico Dorigny, Antonio Pellegrini, Giambattista Pittoni, Giuseppe Zais and Bernardino Bison. Most of the drawings were previously in the Fiocco and Fissore Pozzi collections. The exhibition also features a large watercolour View of San Giorgio Maggiore, attributed to Francesco Guardi, and a selection of portraits depicting the variegated world of 18th-century Venice from the album of caricatures by Anton Maria Zanetti, gifted to the Foundation by Vittorio Cini in 1968.

A further attraction in the drawings exhibition is a marvellous gouache by Francesco Guardi, depicting a striking architectural capriccio (c. 1760). The work has been lent by the Musée Jacquemart-André di Parigi in exchange for the loan of Pontormo’s Portrait of Two Friends from the Cini Gallery for an exhibition on 16th-century Florentine portraiture (Florence. Portraits à la cour des Médicis, Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris; 11 September 2015-25 January 2016).

A treasure chest of masterpieces, including around thirty Tuscan School paintings and Ferrarese Renaissance paintings, the Palazzo Cini at San Vio re-opened last April with the arrival of new works and furnishings. Originally in Vittorio Cini’s remarkable private collection, they now further enhance the exhibition itinerary of the permanent collection on the first floor, also open to the public.

Lastly, on the first floor of the Gallery, the Madonna di Pontassieve by Fra Angelico, on loan from the Galleria degli Uffizi, continues to be on show until 28 September.