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The Palazzo Cini Gallery, the extraordinary museum house that was once Vittorio Cini’s home and now contains the masterpieces from his personal collection, reopens to the public – this year again in collaboration with Assicurazioni Generali – on 25 April 2015 with a number of new attractions for visitors. Some additional works of art and furnishings have further enhanced the itinerary, while the recently refurbished second floor will host a series of temporary exhibitions, starting with a focus on contemporary art in the form of a solo show by Ettore Spalletti, conceived in collaboration with Luca Massimo Barbero (until 23 August). This year’s cultural activities programme also includes the return of A Guest at the Palace and Art Conversations, aimed to keep the Gallery lively until the season ends on 15 November 2015.

The Palazzo Cini Gallery is a treasury of masterpieces with around thirty Tuscan School paintings, donated by Yana Cini to the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in 1981 together with the part of the palazzo containing them, and the Ferrarese Renaissance paintings presented in 1989 by Ylda Cini Guglielmi di Vulci. Now the Gallery is reopening with significant new paintings and furnishings, previously in the extraordinary collection put together by the Vittorio Cini. They will further enhance the itinerary of the permanent collection on the first floor thanks to the generosity of Ylda Cini’s daughter. After many years, these objects will once more furnish the precious rooms in Count Cini’s residence, thus reconstructing the intimate atmosphere of the collector’s princely home. They include a richly carved wardrobe decorated by splendid sculptures (Hercules, Neptune and cupids), attributed to the circle of Jacopo Tatti called Sansovino (Florence, 1486 -Venice, 1570), and a massive antique table embellished with telamons and caryatids, which has once more been placed in its original position in the principal salone, in front of the recently restored polyptych by Lorenzo di Niccolò. Among the precious objects that have returned to the palace, there are two wonderful polychrome terracotta snake-handled jars and a “globular” apothecary jar, so-called for its typical flat-bellied form, an example of the rich production of a major 16th-century Venetian maiolica workshop.

One of the important new features of the Palazzo Cini reopening is the use of the second floor, recently renovated according to the latest exhibition standards, to host a programme of temporary exhibitions. The refurbishing has again involved the collaboration of the firm Master Audio, which installed the new high-tech lighting system on the second floor to provide an optimal setting for temporary exhibitions. Mainly conceived as a means of showcasing the extraordinary material held in the Institute of Art History’s collections and archives on the island of San Giorgio, this space will be opened to coincide with the Venice Biennale with a focus on contemporary art: an exhibition of works by Ettore Spalletti, devised in collaboration with Luca Massimo Barbero and specially created for the Palazzo Cini by sounding out and thinking about space so as to lay out the works as if in an ideal continuity with the past, when the great collector Vittorio Cini lived in the same rooms.

www.palazzocini.it/en