From September 26, 2025 to January 12, 2026, Ca’ Rezzonico - Museo del Settecento Veneziano hosts the exhibition Gusto neoclassico. The Cicognara Album, curated by Alberto Craievich. The exhibition presents to the public an exceptional volume preserved at the Gabinetto dei disegni e delle stampe of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, one of the most important testimonies of neoclassical art and culture in Italy. The Album takes its name from its owner, Count Leopoldo Cicognara (Ferrara, 1767 - Venice, 1834), a leading figure of Italian Neoclassicism and a protagonist of the cultural and political life of his time. Cicognara spent his youth between humanistic studies and educational travels throughout the Peninsula. His public career began with his membership in the Cisalpine Republic, of which he was a member of the legislative body, and continued in 1808 with his appointment as president of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, a position he held even after the fall of Napoleon until 1826.
During his tenure, Cicognara distinguished himself by an active and far-sighted cultural policy. He published his major works, including the monumental Storia della scultura and Le fabbriche più cospicue di Venezia, and promoted major initiatives such as the arrangement of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, which at the time housed paintings from the houses of worship suppressed by Napoleonic decree. His close relationship with the artists of the time is reflected precisely in the Cicognara Album, conceived as a liber amicorum.
The album includes 81 sheets and collects signatures and works by all the major artists of Italian Neoclassicism, including Vincenzo Camuccini, Andrea Appiani, Giuseppe Bossi, and the young Francesco Hayez. The presence of French artists such as François-Marius Granet, Lancelot-Théodore Turpin de Crissé, and Louis Léopold Robert highlights the collector’s international openness. Six drawings belong to Antonio Canova, a longtime friend and subject of admiration for Cicognara. Originally, the drawings were collected in an album housed in a sumptuous decorative bronze frame with friezes enclosing antique cameos and, in the center, a miniature depicting a View of Venice.
The sheets document all the graphic techniques of the period and range over every conceivable subject: pencil, pen, colored chalks and watercolors depict views, portraits, landscapes, genre scenes, animals and sacred and profane compositions. Overall, the album combines preparatory studies for major works and drawings made especially for the count, offering a comprehensive overview of the artistic schools of the period. The work was reported to the studios by Álvar González-Palacios in 1970 and was presented to the public in 1978 during the exhibition Venice in the Age of Canova. On that occasion, for conservation reasons, the pages were dissolved from the album and placed in passepartouts.
Some sheets had already been displayed in exhibitions dedicated to Neoclassicism in Italy and abroad. After almost fifty years, the exhibition at Ca’ Rezzonico offers for the first time the album in its entirety, enhanced by a careful restoration promoted by the Venice International Foundation. The decision to exhibit the Cicognara Album at the venue allows the work to be contextualized within the Museum of Eighteenth-Century Venice, offering visitors the opportunity to understand not only the artistic value of the drawings, but also the political and cultural role of the collector. The exhibition allows a close look at a variety of graphic techniques, from the use of pencil to colored chalks, watercolors to pens, highlighting the richness and variety of the neoclassical artistic repertoire.
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| Neoclassical taste: the Cicognara Album on display at Ca' Rezzonico, Venice |
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