_{Maestro Olivetano, cut from Gradual with Corpus Domini or Holy Communion by the Apostles, initial C}

A large exhibition entitled Mindful Hands. Masterpieces of Illumination from the Fondazione Giorgio Cini is due to be staged on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice from 17 September 2016 to 8 January 2017 (official opening: Friday, 16 September 2016). Produced by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in collaboration with Studio Michele De Lucchi and Factum Arte, the exhibition is being organised with the support of the Helen Hamlyn Trust and the contribution of Pirelli.
For the first time in over 35 years more than half of one of the most fascinating, invaluable Fondazione Cini collections will be on show: the collection of 236 miniatures acquired by Count Vittorio Cini from the Libreria Antiquaria Hoepli in Milan in 1939-1940, and presented to the Foundation in 1962. Visitors will be able to admire a selection of over 120 of the most significant and important miniatures in the collection plus a group of particularly fine illuminated codices. The academic curators of the project are Federica Toniolo, a lecturer in the History of Illuminated Manuscripts at the University of Padua, Massimo Medica, director of the Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna, and Alessandro Martoni, Fondazione Cini Institute of Art History, who were also responsible for cataloguing the entire collection.

One of the most important of its kind in the world, the Vittorio Cini miniature collection is made up of anthologies of illuminated leaves and cuttings of initials, mostly from liturgical works (graduals and antiphonals), comparable both in type and quality to collections such as the Wildenstein, now in the Musée Marmottan, Paris, or the Lehman collection, previously in storage in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. The Cini collection is representative of the principal regional Italian schools of manuscript illumination and includes works by some of the most pre-eminent illuminators, active from the 12th to the 16th centuries.

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