Of all the collections and private archives acquired by the Foundation, literary archives are particularly interesting. Mainly made up of correspondences, they preserve materials and documents concerning leading Italian and European cultural figures in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries (Gabriele D'Annunzio, Giovanni Pascoli, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Diego Valeri, Giovanni Comisso, Stefan Zweig, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, etc.)
In addition to the literary archives, there are some special archives of great importance in terms of history or type. They include the Boito Archive, which is divided between the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice (held in the Institute of Theatre and Opera and the Institute of Music) and the Conservatorio Arrigo Boito, Parma.
Acquired in 1970, the Botta Archive is dedicated to Gustavo Botta (1880-1948), a collector and acute art critic, specialised in late 19th-century Lombard painting, as well as a connoisseur of symbolist and decadent French poetry. A poet in his own right, influenced by Claudel, Pascoli and D'Annunzio, Botta was a leading figure in early 20th-century Milanese literary circles in contact with B...
Donated by the painter Lisa Bucci in 1977, the archive principally consists of 53 letters sent to Lisa by Diego Valeri from 1943 to 1974. Also included are some of Valeri's publications and 12 photographs of paintings by Bucci.
Donated in 1975 by Maria Luisa Cian Gazzera, daughter of Vittorio Cian (1862-1951), this collection of documents bears witness to the intense sixty-year career of her father, an eminent scholar, born in the Veneto and author of influential works on Baldassare Castiglione, Pietro Bembo and Vittorio Alfieri. Also a lecturer at the University of Turin and elsewhere, Cian was above all an indefa...
The archive arrived in 1987, after being bequeathed by the Prague-born painter Charlotte Radnitz, known as Lotte Frumi (1899-1986), who had moved to Venice from the Paris of Utrillo and the Montparnasse artists in 1929, following her marriage to Guido Ehrenfreund (who Italianised his surname into Frumi). The couple were subsequently always in contact with various cosmopolitan intellectuals, ...
The archive was donated in 1977 by Elsa Geiger Ariè, daughter of the Austrian poet, writer and essayist Benno Geiger (1882-1965), who for many years lived in Venice, where he died. The largest and most important part of the considerable material consists of letters from almost 500 Italian and foreign correspondents to Geiger, such as Hofmannstahl, Rilke, Kokoschka, Bernard, Perosi, Bossi, Pa...
Presented in 1979 by Pasquale Veniero Martinuzzi, the archive consists of fifteen letters: an undated letter sent by Gabriele D'Annunzio to the painter Astolfo De Maria, plus fourteen dating from 1918-1928, sent by D'Annunzio to his favourite Murano glass artist and sculptor, Napoleone Martinuzzi (1892-1977), who made various art works for the poet, and even designed a Mausoleum for him, whi...
The archive entered the Fondazione Cini in 1968 thanks to a donation by Memmi Strozzi Corcos, daughter of the painter, Vittorio Matteo Corcos (1859-1933). It comprises about 120 letters from several correspondents to various recipients, such as the remarkable hundred missives by Giovanni Pascoli, almost all of them addressed to Emma Ciabatti, the widow of Rotigliano, who married Corcos in 18...
Acquired by the Foundation in 1968 through a donation from Angelo Tursi, the archive includes forty letters, almost all addressed to Gabriele D'Annunzio by the journalist Virginio Avi from 1918 to 1919. Editor of the Gazzetta di Venezia from 1917 to 1922, when he died of Spanish influenza, Avi was a prominent patriot and provided crucial support for D'Annunzio in the Fiume venture, which is ...
Donated in 1978 by Marina and Giovanna Valeri, the collection includes manuscripts, publications, newspaper cuttings, photographs, and autographed books by the poet, writer and university professor Diego Valeri (1887-1976), as well as a collection of letters with about 400 correspondents. The correspondence has been catalogued as part of a project in collaboration with the Civic Library of P...
In the 1950s, the Fondazione Cini set up a large-scale research project, called the Atlante Linguistico Mediterraneo (ALM, Mediterranean Linguistic Atlas), thanks to the longsighted vision of Gianfranco Folena.
The importance of the project is demonstrated by the fact that it immediately attracted the collaboration of eminent specialists in Italy and Europe: Carlo Battisti, Gerhard Rohl...