This collection consists of 1,292 black and white photographs on fine glossy cardboard (18 x 24 cm), documenting the production of the Marinali workshop and other sculptors active in the Veneto in the late 17th and early 18th century. The collection was acquired by the Fondazione Cini from the Vicenza-based photographer Giorgio Di Natale in 1977, who expressed the wish that it be kept in a prestigious institution.

As revealed in a letter of 15 September 1977 to the director of the Institute of Art History, Rodolfo Pallucchini, Di Natale had conducted the photographic campaign on the Marinali workshop as part of his "wider-ranging plan to record all the beautiful objects surrounding us, as I am concerned about the damage to them, so often irreparable, caused by the so-called civilisation of consumption and mass-media; often with irreversible results. My aim is not to hoard a treasure for myself, but to prepare material to be entrusted to those who can preserve it for posterity and/or use it for the enjoyment of all art lovers."

The photographs, each with the photographer's stamp and the date 1976, entered the Foundation in twenty-one ring-binder albums, complete with captions and a small group of publications on the Marinali, used by Di Natale as a starting point for his campaign. The subsequent relocation of the material in standard folders respects the original order given to the images and has retained the captions and texts attached to the photographs.

The so-called "Marinalian photographic itinerary" documents the vast production of the Vicentine workshop founded by Francesco Marinali, a sculptor and carver, who moved from Bassano to Vicenza in the 1670s with his sons Orazio (1643-1720), Francesco (1647-1727 ) and Angelo (1654-1702), also talented sculptors. The renown achieved by the Marinali, and by Orazio in particular, prolonged beyond the mid-18th century through the work of their heir Giacomo Cassetti, is demonstrated by the growing number of orders and commissions also from outside Vicenza, as amply documented in the photographic collection. Covering the various areas of the Marinali's production, the collection includes images of sculptures made for the churches and palaces of Vicenza, but also for nearby villas: from the Villa La Rotonda to the vast cycles of Montegalda, Montegaldella, Trissino and for less well-known buildings such as the Villa Piovene at Castelgomberto, where they worked with various other sculptors. Di Natale also extended his documentation to Vicentine workshop's production for patrons in Treviso, Verona, Venice, and as far afield as Udine, Brescia, and Florence, where he photographed the statues in the garden of Harold Acton's Villa La Pietra. The collection also includes images of sculptures now in Italian and foreign museum collections, for which the photographer sometimes requested specific reproductions.

A highlight of the valuable material in the Marinali collection is the series of sheets from the so-called Album Marinali in the Bassano del Grappa Museo Civico, containing the drawings used as working tools in the Vicentine workshop, and a group of terracotta bozzetti from the Vicenza Musei Civici, used as preparatory models for larger statues. Lastly, the collection also contains photographic documentation on the production of various masters, from local Vicentine artists such as Albanese and Giovanni, Antonio and Tommaso Bonazza, up to Giusto Le Court (Josse de Corte), Enrico Merengo, Giovanni Maria Morlaiter, and other sculptors, now attributed works - in the most recent studies - previously assigned to the Marinali.