Versione Italiana -Translation by Paul Rosenberg
An overview of the life and works of Vittorio Cini is presented in the exhibition that opened in August, commissioned by Giovanni Alliata and organized within the Fondazione Archivio Vittorio Cini. In the spaces in Dorsoduro, next to the Bottega Cini, a film by the Istituto Luce and a series of panels retrace the biography of a character who was a fixture in the city of Venice for many decades.
Vittorio Cini was born in Ferrara in 1885 and died in Venice in 1977, and lived through the most intense and dramatic years of 19th century history, as well as those of post-war reconstruction, with his career as an entrepreneur, collector and politician. The homage that Giovanni Alliata, his grandson, wanted to pay to his grandfather reconnects the figure of the enterprising young man from Ferrara who arrived in Venice at the beginning of the 20th century to the industrial, social, economic and cultural life of the lagoon city. These Included the years of the fascist regime, which saw Vittorio Cini participate as general commissioner in the project for the Universal Exhibition of the EUR in Rome and be appointed Minister of Communications and Senator of the Kingdom of Italy, from which he later resigned due to disagreements with the regime and his subsequent arrest by the SS and consequent internment in the Dachau concentration camp.
His was a life full of enterprises, ideas, projects, with the Island of San Giorgio and its Foundation dedicated to the memory of his son Giorgio, a very important Venetian cultural reality commissioned by Vittorio Cini in 1951 together with the architect Nino Barbantini, who had overseen the significant restorations of the castle of Monselice, near the trachyte quarries that were used for the paving of Piazza San Marco. Hills rich in silica, the Mons Silicis which gives its name to the town in the province of Padua, it is the site of an ancient Roman settlement.
There are many details highlighted together with the video of the Istituto Luce that retrace the life story of Vittorio Cini, remembered in Venice for the Foundation on the island of San Giorgio, created following the tragic death of his son Giorgio in a plane crash. Vittorio, born into a wealthy family, broadened his mind starting in his youth by studying in Switzerland and England, an Erasmus antelitteram that put the young Ferrarese in contact with the infrastructure construction companies that at the beginning of the 19th century were advancing and changing transportation and construction in Europe.
Chioggia was the headquarters of the first Vittorio Cini Company, then came his enlistment during the First World War and his love and marriage to the actress Lyda Borelli, with whom he had four children. His business in the maritime transport sector increased, especially together with financial activities and the beginning of his art collecting, he developed increasingly close ties with Venice and with Giuseppe Volpi, made investments in the industrial area of Marghera and built the translagoon bridge that since 1933 has connected the city of water to the mainland. He was president of SADE and, after his son’s death, founder of the cultural center Fondazione Giorgio Cini, a place that Vittorio Cini also considered a laboratory of ideas and proposals for the protection of fragile Venice, an island of culture with Mestre and Marghera as production and service centers, according to the concept of the time.
How would a multifaceted and eclectic figure like Cini fit into today’s Venice, subservient to tourism but resistant as a cultural center? The recollections of his grandson Giovanni Alliata, son of his fourth daughter Yana, retrace the main stages of his grandfather’s life and also open up new perspectives for understanding. There are interesting testimonies by some of the visitors to the exhibition who recall various episodes now very distant in time. For example, the story of the Swiss priest who was Cini’s confessor after the war on his return from the concentration camp, or the episode linked to Giorgio’s tragic death on the plane, predicted by a clairvoyant in a hotel in Cannes immediately before the dramatic accident that occurred on August 31, 1949.
Yes, Vittorio Cini would also like the shop next to the windows that feature a giant photograph of his likeness, a “canton” that looks out onto the streets and foundations as per the best tradition.
Giovanni Alliata wanders busily between the exhibition that retraces his grandfather’s life and the Bottega Cini, whose rooms open in front of the beautiful Palazzo a San Vio (where Vittorio Cini lived until his death), home to the Gallery that houses the collection of ancient art collected by Cini himself. The Bottega hosts various fine examples of Venetian art and craftsmanship: a revisitation of the Renaissance space that once brought together art, culture, commerce, contacts, innovation. Born from the synergy between the Fondazione Archivio Vittorio Cini, The Merchant of Venice and Museyoum (virtual reality films at the service of culture), the Bottega offers a high-level cross-section of craftsmanship and documentation on that thousand-year-old thread that ties Venice to its merchants, entrepreneurs, men of science and culture, and skilled artisans rich in imagination and inventiveness.
Merchant of Venice tells the story of the ancient art of perfumes combined with the equally ancient art of glass, a “merchant of Venice” that harks back to the comedy written at the end of the 16th century by William Shakespeare but also to the caravans that for hundreds of years have traveled the sea routes of the “mude” or land caravans dedicated to the most diverse trades, and in particular the naval convoys that traveled towards the Levant and returned to Venice with all kinds of fabrics, gems, woods, spices and essences for the very precious perfumes. Merchant of Venice has revived and redeveloped this art in the Dese laboratories since 2013.
Marisa Convento sits behind her “impiraressa” counter, practicing an ancient craft of Venetian women who threaded the glass beads produced in Murano into many small and magical colored branches, so that the journeys into the world of pearls would be easier. The “conterie”, beads of different sizes and colors, are worked hot to form earrings and necklaces, embroidery and ornaments that have represented for centuries and continue to represent the excellence of Venetian craftsmanship. The first document on the art of glass dates back to the year 983. Marisa Convento explains the intimate union between Venice and its glass paste beads that spread throughout the world, which were created from the guilds of the master glassmakers, the “perlere” and the “impiraresse”, an ancient supply chain that continues to produce universally appreciated masterpieces. Finally, in 2013 the Committee for the Safeguarding of the Art of Venetian Glass Beads was born, and in 2020 the UNESCO Commission included the Glass Bead in the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Marisa also opens her laboratory inside the Bottega Cini to students from Ca’ Foscari, who during Glass Week took turns with free workshops between stove and glass rods to become familiar with the ancient art of glassmaking.
“There is growth of interest that we can see month after month – says Giovanni Alliata – and I am fascinated by the variety of objects that daily spring from the imagination of our impiraressa”, who is one of the five remaining in the city.
While Marisa recounts with satisfaction the decades-long passages that led to UNESCO recognition, people from around the world enter the shop, and like it has for centuries in the city, languages intertwine, and human contacts expand. The art of glass is fascinating and the creativity that springs from the fire and the rotation of hands to create the roundness of the bead enchants tourists.
Alongside Marisa’s creations is the refined display of perfumes from the Merchant of Venice brand, which features creations by master glassmakers from the Nason Moretti and Ercole Moretti houses, along with other local artisan brands, from publishing to ceramics. The essences sold under this brand are closely linked to the Palazzo Mocenigo Museum (part of the Fondazione Musei Civici Veneziani), which hosts a Perfume Museum section next to Costume and Fabrics. The Merchant of Venice collection comprises six Eau de Parfum, contained in precious glass bottles, as well as various Eau de Parfum concentrée that derive from the ancient essences, spices, and musk that traders brought to Venice from their travels and commercial expeditions in the East: we go on a journey with bergamot, geranium, sandalwood, ginger, amber, vanilla, patchouli, incense, saffron, myrrh, cinnamon, vetiver, jasmine, cocoa, lotus, verbena, tuberose, pink pepper, rosemary, orange, peach, tuberose, rose, magnolia……
The study of ancient cosmetic and perfume techniques takes place in the Dese laboratory where the work to perfect procedures dating back almost to the year 1000, imported to Venice from Byzantium after the arrival of Teodora Ducaina, the sister of Emperor Michele Ducas. When she arrived in Venice to be married to Doge Domenico Selvo in 1071 as part of the alliances between the nascent Republic of Venice and ancient Byzantium, Teodora brought ointments and essences to Venice that were immediately received both as objects of well-being and as a new form of investment and trade. Venice did not miss out on the opportunity to launch new trends on international markets; the city was a true hotbed of what are now called start-ups. Hence the ancient tradition that since 2013 has united the art of the “muschieri” (perfume artisans who filled gloves and other objects with scented essences) with that of the glassmakers, in an inebriating display of colors, perfumes and objects linked to memory that is to be transmitted into the future.
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