Over the last 12 months, a series of 3D digitisation projects have demonstrated the importance of ARCHiVe (Analysing and Recording Cultural Heritage in Venice). After scanning the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, the Teatro Verde, the Vatican Chapels and a large Franco-Flemish tapestry on San Giorgio Maggiore, this month we have been recording of a selection of paintings in the Galleria di Palazzo Cini in San Vio.

Thanks to the collaboration between the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s Istituto di Storia dell'Arte and Factum Foundation, this unique group of artworks that formed the core of Vittorio Cini's art collection are being digitised in high-resolution.

The recording has been carried out over a period of three weeks by Gabriel Scarpa, Carolina Gris and Marina Luchetti, part of Factum’s team in ARCHiVe, employing the Lucida 3D Scanner in combination with composite photography. The work will provide an accurate database that will help monitor the conservation state of the paintings, study the works in detail both as images and physical objects and disseminate their artistic and historic value. The data will be processed over the next weeks, to create viewers available to both experts and general public to inspect every detail of both surface and colour.

The information that has been recorded will become part of the holdings of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and contribute to the preservation and dissemination envisaged by Vittorio Cini and his advisor Bernard Berenson. Two of the paintings were part of the Polittico Griffoni and have already been made as facsimiles that are on permanent display in the Museo della Città in Bologna.