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Showing posts with label stolen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stolen. Show all posts

November 8, 2024

Friday, November 08, 2024 - ,,,, No comments

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 by Report and 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 alterpiece 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.  

The altarpiece connected to Sgarbi was scheduled to be hung at the exhibition Il Cinquecento a Ferrara: Mazzolino, Ortolano, Garofalo, Dossa which has been curated by the art critic and is scheduled to run through 16 February 2025 at the Palazzo dei Diamanti.  

Following law enforcement investigations carried about by the Carabinieri TPC however, the altarpiece was removed from display, just three days before the start of the exhibition.  In the Ferrara exhibition dossier listed the artwork as being the property of the Collezione Cavallini Sgarbi.  Unfortunately it is suspected to be an artwork which was stolen in 1984 from a noble palace belonging to journalist Paganello Spetia in Bevagna. 

In addition to the suspect painting of Christ after his crucifixion, officers also executed a seizure for a terracotta sculpture, titled Madre e figlio, by Raffaele Consortini, an artist from Volterra, dating to 1939. 

Sgarbi had exhibited this object 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, the sculpture depicting a mother holding her infant child was indicated as being the property of the Fondazione Cavallini-Sgarbi.  

That said, the sculpture too seems to be tied to a theft.  It apparently matched a sculpture reported as stolen twenty-seven years ago, in 1997.  

The artwork was apparently taken from the burial chapel of the Nannipieri family, where it had been previously been placed at the family's tomb of the son of Antonio Nannipieri, a former judge of the Court of Appeal of Florence, who died, along with his girlfriend, in an accident in 1987.   

In Judge Nannipieri's own words when informed that his son's sculpture was in Sgarbi's collection: “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, this leads us to a second critical question, who Sgarbi got these works from in the first place. 

August 7, 2015

Friday, August 07, 2015 - ,,, No comments

Ames Stradivarius owned by Roman Totenberg Recovered 35 years after theft


by Judge Arthur Tompkins

The New York Times reported August 6 (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/arts/music/roman-totenbergs-stolen-stradivarius-is-found-after-35-years.html) that a Stradivarius violin stolen back in 1980 was recovered in June this year, and has been returned to the family of the original owner.

The Ames Stradivarius recovered by the F.B.I. in June.
(Credit Federal Bureau of Investigation, via Associated Press)


The ‘Ames Stradivarius’ was created by the legendary Italian violin-maker Antonio  Stradivarius in 1734. By 1980 it had been owned and played by Roman Totenberg, a well-known violin player and teacher, and director of the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass., for nearly 40 years.  At the time of the theft, which happened during a reception following a concert, the violin was said to be valued at $250,000.

Saratoga Herald-Tribune, Friday May 16, 1980, page 5-A.
Michael Cooper reported in The NYT that the violin re-appeared earlier this year after an unnamed woman, who recounted that she had inherited the violin from her late ex-husband, sought advice from an appraiser. The appraiser immediately recognised both that it was a genuine Stradivarius, and that it was the stolen Ames Stradivarius.  The appraiser contacted the FBI’s Art Theft team, who immediately verified the identity of the instrument and took possession of it.

As noted in The NYT, it seems that the now deceased ex-husband was suspected of the theft by Mr Totenberg (who died in 2012) right from the start:
Ms. Totenberg [Roman Totenberg’s daughter] said that the woman had inherited the violin from the man Ms. Totenberg’s father had suspected all along of stealing the instrument. The man had been seen in the vicinity of his office at Longy near the time of the theft, and a woman once visited Mr. Totenberg and told him that she believed that the man had stolen his violin. But to the family’s frustration, investigators at the time apparently did not believe that the tip was sufficient for them to obtain a search warrant.
The family had received an insurance pay-out at the time of the theft. That has now been repaid, and the instrument will be restored and sold:
“[The family are] going to make sure that it’s in the hands of another great artist who will play it in concert halls all over the world,” she said. “All of us feel very strongly that the voice has been stilled for too long.”

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