The Drawings and Prints Cabinet of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia presents the Cicognara Album, an extraordinary testimony to Neoclassical art and culture in Italy. The volume once belonged to Leopoldo Cicognara (1767–1834), a refined intellectual, president of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, and a central figure in the city’s cultural life between the Napoleonic era and the Restoration.
Consisting of 81 sheets, the album gathers works by leading Italian Neoclassical artists – from Camuccini to Appiani, Bossi, and a young Francesco Hayez – as well as French masters such as Granet, Turpin de Crissé, and Robert. Of particular note are six drawings by Antonio Canova, with whom Cicognara maintained a lifelong friendship and intellectual exchange.
The sheets, showcasing a wide range of graphic techniques and subjects – from views and portraits to landscapes, preparatory studies and finished works – form a unique “liber amicorum”, reflecting the artistic and cultural vibrancy of the time.
First unveiled to the public in 1978, the album is now displayed in its entirety for the first time in nearly fifty years, following a meticulous restoration promoted by Venice International Foundation. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to rediscover a fundamental chapter in Venetian and European Neoclassicism.
