San Giorgio Maggiore - so named to distinguish it from another island in the lagoon, San Giorgio in Alga - was originally an area of salt-works, mills and flourishing orchards. In 790 it acquired its name from a small church dedicated to St. George. From the year 982, as a result of a donation of the Doge Tribuno Memmo, it became the seat of a Benedictine monastery, the first abbot of which was the patrician Giovanni Morosini. Over the centuries the Abbey of St. George grew and prospered, acquiring great prestige as a centre of spiritual and cultural diffusion, and also as a privileged site of meeting and refuge. This growing prosperity was matched by the development of its monumental buildings, enriched by works of the greatest artists operating in Venice. At the beginning of the sixteenth-century, the Gothic complex in the centre of the island was superseded by a Renaissance reconstruction, with the first Tuscan-inspired cloister, maybe Medicean-Michelozzian in style (Cosimo de' Medici, driven out from Florence, took refuge on San Giorgio with his court in 1433).
The present church and refectory are the work of the greatest architect of the Veneto Renaissance, Andrea Palladio. The church, begun in 1556 and completed at the beginning of the next century, after Palladio's death, is dedicated to St. George and St. Stephen (the mortal remains of the latter are conserved in the church) and is built on a Latin-cross plan, with three aisles, a central dome and a large chancel, in the centre of which rises Vassilachi's high altar, with sculptures by Gerolamo and Giuseppe Campagna. Behind the altar are situated the great wooden choir-stalls, illustrating the life of St. Benedict, carved by the Flemish artist Alberto van den Brulle, and dated 1595.
The aisles contain sepulchral monuments, to doges and other dignitaries, by such distinguished sculptors as Alessandro Vittoria; the paintings include masterpieces like "The Last Supper" and "The Fall of Manna" by Jacopo Tintoretto, and other canvasses by Domenico Tintoretto, Jacopo Bassano, Palma il Giovane and Sebastiano Ricci.
In the upper chapel - where in 1799 the Conclave was opened which, the following year, was to elect Pope Pius VII - hangs a painting by Carpaccio representing St. George slaying the dragon.
To the right of the square in front of the church is the entrance to the two cloisters of the ancient monastery. The second cloister, the inner and more ancient one, gives access to the Sala del Capitolo (the Chapter House), with a Lombardesque portal, and the grandiose Palladian hall of the Refectory. This latter was the fruit of a collaboration with Paolo Veronese who, in order to "open up" the end wall, painted the huge canvas representing the Wedding Feast at Cana, which was taken to Paris during the Napoleonic period and there hung in the Louvre; its place has been taken by a painting of the Tintoretto school representing the Marriage of the Virgin.
The Monumental staircase and the library are the work of Baldassarre Longhena. The library, situated on the first floor, is furnished with shelves and wooden statues by Franz Pauc and decorated with a series of ceiling paintings by two famous mannerists of the seventeenth century, generally known as "i fratelli lucchesini" (the brothers from Lucca).
The far wing of the cloister is closed by the famous Dormitory, 128 metres in length, built at the end of the fifteenth century by Giovanni Buora from Lugano and his son Andrea.
With the fall of the Serenissima, the island began to suffer the devastation and pillaging of the occupying forces, first during the Napoleonic period and later under the domination of the Austrians. After the closure of the Benedictine monastery, San Giorgio became a free-port and some warehouses were constructed on the northern side, while the dock was closed by a small jetty. After the brief popular revolt against the Austrians in 1848, the island became an Austrian military installation; and it maintained this function, though with entirely different aims, even when Venice became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866.
San Giorgio, cluttered with sheds, huts and other utilitarian structures, its architectural treasures haphazardly divided and often crudely propped up, thus suffered its period of greatest decline, in both the spiritual and material sense.
The island was rescued from this period of decline - which lasted more than a century - and from its apparently inevitable consequences thanks to the Giorgio Cini Foundation, a private institution created by Count Vittorio Cini in memory of his son Giorgio, who died in an air-crash. The Foundation was juridically recognized with a decree dated 12 July 1951. The island, by state concession, was entrusted to the Foundation for the purpose of restoring the historical buildings and founding there its own social and cultural institutions. After the restauration and the adaptation of the historical buildings, the Foundation set up on the island three autonomous operational centres: the Naval Training Centre, the Arts and Crafts Centre and the Centre of Culture and Civilisation.
Over the years two of these three Centres while remaining faithful to their original institutional aims have somewhat changed their structures and in some case also their specific tasks, turning towards activities of greater social relevance, in keeping with the social evolution that the country has undergone over the last forty years.
The old Nautical Centre has thus been transformed into a direct enterprise of the "Giorgio Cini" ProfessionaI Institute of State for Nautical Activities, which had already taken over from the equivalent and, in Italy, pioneering professional school "invented" by the Foundation.
Similarly, when the new technical requirements of space made it necessary for the professional courses on the Salesian model that had been instituted at San Giorgio to move to the mainland, the Arts and Crafts Centre was transformed into an independent Advanced Institute of Educational Research, on an international basis, still run by the Salesian Congregation.
The activities formerly under the aegis of the Centre of Culture and Civilisation are now run by the Foundation itself, which is directly responsible for all the cultural activities of San Giorgio.
These activities have behind them the Foundation's long experience of cultural work, devoted both to historical studies on Venetian civilisation and to themes and problems of major contemporary relevance or urgency.
In the first place there is the study and research work carried out by the Foundation's Institutes, which are structured along the lines of what in Britain and America are termed "advanced-study institutes": the Institute for the History of Art, the Institute of the History of the Venetian State and Society, the Institute of Literature, Theatre and Melodrama, the Institute for Music, the "Venice and the East" Institute. To these must be added a sixth specifically devoted to the study and illustration of the works of the great venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi. To carry out their institutional tasks, the Institutes make use of their own specialised libraries and photo-collections, of their documentary and musical archives, the Rolandi Collection of opera-libretti - the most important in Europe and perhaps in the world - as well as a fully equipped micro-film library which above all conserves documents regarding the political and cultural history of the Serenissima. The Institutes undertake various initiatives of research, either directly or by promotion; they either organize or sponsor study-encounters and seminars; similarly they also promote publications and artistic or documentary exhibitions and musical performances. The Foundation owns many outstanding collections, which primarily constitute a valuable instrument of research; among these are the collections of drawings (principally of Venetian and Emilian school), of illuminated manuscripts from the XII to the XVI century, of incunabula and illustrated books of the Renaissance, of manuscripts and documentary or historical archives; all research material that supplements and enriches the library collections of San Giorgio.
As well as the scientific work of the Institutes, the Foundation organizes also courses, at a post-graduate level, and regular conferences and study- seminars on arguments of historical or scientific character but also, as has been mentioned, on themes of social or cultural importance or particular actuality.
The research work undertaken at San Giorgio, and also the study encounters, are documented in various publications, books and periodicals edited directly by the Foundation and brought out by various publishing-houses in regular series (to date there are more than 400 such "titles"). The Foundation furthermore takes an active part in other more far-reaching editorial enterprises, such as - in the past years - its patronage of various encyclopaedias: the Universal Encyclopaedia of Art, the Encyclopaedias of Theatre, of Eastern Civilisation and of Philosophy. At present the Foundation is actively involved in other initiatives of notable importance, such as the National Edition of the musical works of Andrea Gabrieli, the annotated catalogue of the whole Rolandi Collection, a series of books devoted to Popular Veneto Culture (which are coming out under the auspices of the Regione del Veneto), and above all the great "History of Venice" in twenty or so volumes - this too in collaboration with the Veneto Regional Council and published by the Institute of the Italian Encyclopaedia - for which the Foundation has set up a special Scientific Committee that is regularly meeting at San Giorgio.
The Giorgio Cini Foundation also welcomes in the island of San Giorgio study meetings and conferences organized by other qualified scientific and cultural Institutions, both Italian and foreign, and occasionally - in a spirit of public service towards the city, the nation and also those "supernational" Institutions (such as UNESCO, EC, UN, etc.) of which Italy is a member - it hosts other initiatives of a different nature which are nonetheless of exceptional importance in the general field of international relations.
A final mention must be made of the presence on the island of the Benedictine Fathers of the reconstituted Abbey of St. George. This more than millenary presence - which is culturally active above all in the field of the liturgy and Gregorian chant - should not be understood simply as an illustrious memento of a glorious tradition: it serves as a constant reminder of those goals of Christian spirituality that are at the very basis of the renewed social and cultural life of San Giorgio.
In conclusion, it may be added that outside the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, the Foundation owns part of Palazzo Cini, at San Vio, where it preserves - thanks to the generosity of one of the Founder's heirs - a number of important Tuscan paintings and of art objects, formerly belonging to the celebrated private collections of Count Vittorio Cini, which are on regular show to the public.
FONDAZIONE CINI MAP - GROUND FLOOR (49k)
FONDAZIONE CINI MAP - FIRST FLOOR (35k)
