Compianto sul Cristo Morto,Giovanni Battista Benvenuti,Raffaele Consortini,sale of stolen paintings,stolen
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In the news again: Vittorio Sgarbi’s art collection is again under scrutiny for more (allegedly) stolen artworks.
According to a story which was first broke via news reporters affiliated with Italy's TV program Report and news agency Fatto Quotidiano, the Carabinieri TPC have seized two additional suspect works of art, found to be in circulation via Italy's former undersecretary for culture, Vittorio Sgarbi.
The first is an altarpiece, entitled Compianto sul Cristo Morto, a 17th century work measuring 118 by 86.5 cm. The painting represents one of several copies completed by the same artist, Giovanni Battista Benvenuti (also known as Ortolano) which feature more or less the same composition, the newly dead Christ, after his crucification, surrounded by mourners, with Golgotha in ancient Jerusalem, in the background. This version matches most closely to one which was previously housed in the church of Porta di Sotto, known as the "Madonnina", in Ferrara, which is now in the Villa Borghese collection which is pictured here, at left.
The altarpiece version connected to Sgarbi has been talked up as "an unpublished copy," like so many of Sgarbi's newly discovered, artistic discoveries are. It had been scheduled to be hung at an ongoing exhibition Il Cinquecento a Ferrara: Mazzolino, Ortolano, Garofalo, Dossa which has been curated by the art critic scheduled to run through 16 February 2025 at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region.
Following law enforcement investigations, which continue to be carried out, by the Carabinieri TPC, the altarpiece was removed from display at the Palazzo dei Diamanti just three days before the start of the exhibition, due to a "provision from the judicial authority for an ongoing investigation" according to Pietro Di Natale, director of the Ferrara Arte Foundation.
In the exhibition's dossier, the missing painting is described as being the property of the Collezione Cavallini Sgarbi. Unfortunately however, for the ex politician, his altarpiece is suspected to be an artwork which was stolen from a noble palace in 1984 belonging to journalist Paganello Spetia in Bevagna.
In addition to this new suspect painting of Christ after his crucifixion, officers also are investigating the theft of a 1939 terracotta sculpture, titled Madre e Figlio, by Raffaele Consortini, an artist from Volterra, which had been in Sgarbi's possession for many years.
As can be seen at the end of this video, Sgarbi displayed a sculpture, depicting a mother holding her infant child, during an exhibition titled Giotto and the Twentieth Century which ran from 5 December 2022 to 4 June 2023 at the Mart in Rovereto, another public museum presided over by the art critic. In this instance, he indicated that the sculpture was the property of the Fondazione Cavallini-Sgarbi. That said, this artwork too seems to be tied to another theft, as it apparently matches a sculpture reported as stolen twenty-seven years ago.
In that instance the artwork was apparently taken from the burial chapel of the Nannipieri family, in Cascina, in the Italian region Tuscany, located about 60 kilometres west of Florence. According to Antonio Nannipieri, a former judge of the Court of Appeal of Florence, the sculpture had been placed on the altar inside his family chapel by his mother shortly after the death of his son Lorenzo Nannipieri, who died, along with his girlfriend, in an accident in 1987. Ten years later, in 1997, the chapel was broken in to and the sculpture and two candelabras were stolen.
In Judge Nannipieri's own words when informed that his son's sculpture was in Sgarbi's possession, he stated: “Maybe he didn’t know it was stolen, but a collector should check the provenance of the things he buys, especially if he then puts them in an exhibition.”
Leaving aside for a moment that an art historian is more than an average collector, and is fully trained in how to research the origins of works of art, and leaving aside the fact that Sgarbi is now claiming that he too is an "injured party in the proceedings," this leads us to a second critical question, who Sgarbi got all these stolen works from in the first place.