Florentine master Bronzino's Portrait of a Young Man with a Lute from the Galleria degli Uffizi will be the guest of honor at the reopening of the Palazzo Cini in Venice on the 24th of May to celebrate the Institute of History of Art's 60th anniversary.
Bronzino's painting will join an impressive line-up of masterpieces from the Cini collection including works by Giotto, Botticelli and Filippo Lippi.
Portrait of a Young Man with a Lute is closely related to Pontormo's Portrait of Two Friends, one of the Tuscan Renaissance masterpieces in the Cini collection. The two paintings have several cultural affinities and subtle symbolic relations, and currently Pontormo's painting is being shown in a splendid exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence: Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Diverging Paths of Mannerism (8 March – 20 July 2014). The loan is part of the collaboration between the Giorgio Cini Foundation, the Galleria degli Uffizi and the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, which aims at creating a cultural bridge between the two great art cities of Venice and Florence.
This is the first in a series of initiatives called L’ospite a Palazzo (“The Guest at the Palace”). Thanks to agreements with international institutions, each year the rooms of the permanent collection in the Palazzo Cini will host a special 'artwork'. Bronzino’s masterpiece will remain in the Palazzo Cini Gallery until the 2th of July 2014, when Pontormo’s Portrait of Two Friends will return to San Vio, and Venetians and visitors will be able to admire it in its palatial setting until the 2nd of November 2014.
