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January 25, 2025

Saturday, January 25, 2025 - ,,,,,,,,, No comments

Crimes, Canvases and Money Laundering: It's an older (and more complicated) crime than many think

Art is a distinctive asset class, often defined by subjective valuations and discreet sales.  It is also traded in markets where the identities of the "ultimate beneficial owner" can be concealed via shell companies and proxy buyers, making its sale's venues ideal for disguising a range of problematic transactions.  This inherent opacity makes art an appealing medium for laundering the proceeds of crime, as the anonymity of its sales transactions can obscure not only the identities of buyers and sellers but also how the purchaser's capital has been derived. 

While some might view money laundering through art as a contemporary misuse of the art and antiquities markets, the practice is far from a new phenomenon.  In fact, it dates back centuries as this article will discuss.

History gives us some compelling examples of how art and architecture have been leveraged in the past as a tool for wealth laundering.

While commissioning art is not inherently criminal, the Renaissance saw a diverse class of patrons—from influential nobles to emerging merchants and bankers—many of whom facilitated artistic endeavours in order to shape and define their legacies.  Likewise, some of these same patrons, accumulated at least a portion of their fortunes through morally or legally questionable means, including influence peddling, extortion, usury, smuggling, and even in some cases, theft.

As their fortunes flourished, Renaissance patrons looked beyond mere aesthetic enjoyment, leveraging their wealth as a powerful tool to secure prestige, shape influence, and cement legacies.  Much like the museum benefactors of today, the period's philanthropic commissions by the wealthy memorialised their places in their communities, presenting them as paragons of prosperity, beauty, and cultural achievement.

Through these investments, Renaissance patrons brought to life some of the era’s most iconic masterpieces—magnificent architectural achievements, from grand libraries to stunning churches, as well as sculptures, altarpieces, and paintings. Beyond enriching their communities with artistic and cultural treasures, patron endeavours could also serve a strategic purpose: rehabilitating the benefactor’s public image and diverting attention from the questionable origins of their wealth. As such, lavish support of the arts became a powerful form of social currency, cementing a patron's prestige, earning them admiration and loyalty, as well as  bolstering their political and religious influence.

The French Ambassador's Arrival in Venice (1726-1727) by Canaletto

At the crossroads of East and West, the merchants of Venice profited greatly from smuggling, and, later, by evading embargoes.  Earlier, during the Fourth Crusade, the city-state's ships conducted military campaigns that led to the sack and plunder of Constantinople, which provided vibrant embellishments to the city's Basilica di San Marco.  By the Renaissance period, this maritime republic had made its mark as the dominant force in Mediterranean commerce and benefited substantially from trade with the Islamic world, including the Ottoman Empire and Mamluk Sultanate, both of which provided Venetians with all manner of luxury goods.

Trade with Islamic states was so profitable that the Venetians were known to intentionally ignore papacy-imposed embargoes on commerce with Muslims, which the Catholic church deemed adversaries of Christendom.  Rather than comply wholeheartedly with the church's restrictions, Venice pursued pragmatic defiance, often negotiating exemptions, or sometimes more simply, simply paying fines, chalking up the latter as a justifiable cost of doing business.  

In some cases, Venetian authorities openly turned a blind eye to illicit trade, seeing it as it as an indispensable pillar of their thriving economy.   As a result, this smuggler-backed commerce played a critical role in solidifying the Venetian gold ducat as the preferred currency for seafaring merchants across the Mediterranean.  And with this steady influx of wealth, the city's patrons funnelled their coin into grand artistic commissions which furthered artistic competitiveness from artists such as Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese, each of whom helped define Venice’s cultural legacy as a flourishing hub of not just power, and commerce, but also great art. 

Lorenzo the Magnificent receives the tribute of
the ambassadors by Giorgio Vasari
In Florence, the Medici, as influential merchant-bankers, built their own vast fortune through their financial institution, developing ingenious bookkeeping techniques, as well as creative ways to bypass the Catholic church's definition of usury, a sin in the 15th century.  By circumventing religious prohibitions of the period, the family's florins contributed to some of the city's great art and architectural feats, including Sandro Botticelli's iconic Birth of Venus (c. 1484–86), Michelangelo's Tomb of Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino (c. 1525), and Donatello's flamboyant bronze statue of David (c. 1428–32).  

The Medici's financial prosperity also resulted in the commission of grand civic spaces including the now famous palace built on the banks of the River Arno, designed by the multitalented artist Giorgio Vasari to unite the uffici (offices) of the city's thirteen magistrates under one roof.  Later, as the House of Medici's fortunes waned, the palazzo would become home not just to the Medici art collection, but one of Europe's first modern museums, the  Galleria degli Uffizi.

When a coin in the coffer rings,
A soul from purgatory springs.

Pope Julius II orders the works of Vatican and Saint-Peter basilica, 1827
by Horace Vernet

Farther south in Rome, when Pope Julius II laid the cornerstone for his grand basilica over the burial place of St. Peter, he too resorted to unique funding schemes.  One of which was the financing of his new construction project through Jubilee indulgences.  

The Catholic Church taught that sin has a dual consequence: both guilt and temporal punishment.  When an individual committed a sin, they offended god and disrupted their relationship with him, thus incurring guilt.  Said guilt could be addressed through the sacrament of confession (also called reconciliation), where the sinner could receive absolution.  Through this process, the guilt of the sin was forgiven, and the sinner could be reconciled with God.  

The Church however also held that sin causes lingering effects, often described as temporal punishment.  This refers to the spiritual or moral consequences of sin that remain even after absolution.  Temporal punishment in the Renaissance was viewed as a necessary process of purification, where the repenter could absolve him or herself, on earth, or in purgatory, through acts of penance or almsgiving.  And in the case of the upcoming celebratory Jubilee, charitable donations which benefited the papal godfather's new St. Peter's Basilica. 

In European art history, one of the boldest examples of art intersecting with unsavoury dealings is the outlandish escapades of Fabrizio Valguarnera.

Valguarnera was a Sicilian nobleman from a once-prominent Palermo family, which had included the barons of Godrano.  His daring criminal scheme emerged within the vibrant and rapidly expanding 17th-century art market—a reflection of the sweeping societal and economic changes which were reshaping Western Europe during the Baroque era.

His manipulation of purchase records, by employing a fabricated identity to mask his role as the buyer, and his commissioning of both original artworks and copies with illicitly obtained funds, underscores the timeless appeal of art as a tool for disguising the origins of "dirty money," a place where it could be transformed into seemingly legitimate wealth.

Beneath the façade of Valguarnera's declining familial pedigree, he carefully cultivated the image of a sophisticated man-about-town.  Draped in the well-tailored veneer of noble respectability, he understood that his aristocratic lineage, however diminished, could grant him access to influential circles and thereby open doors otherwise closed to the lessor bred.  

From 1628 to 1629, after leaving behind his wife in Sicily, he followed his uncle Mariano, the chaplain to King Philip IV to Spain.  Arriving to Madrid during the Spanish Golden Age, Fabrizio set his sights on becoming the court's physician,  supporting himself along the way as art dealer and by initially selling four Italian artworks that he had brought with him from Palermo.  

During his sojourn in Spain, Valguarnera befriended influential artists and boasted that he had cured (albeit unsuccessfully) Peter Paul Rubens' gout, during the Flemish artist's stay in the capital.  His close relationship and business transactions with Rubens are documented in the grandiloquent letters the Baroque period diplomat wrote to him.  In one of these Rubens speaks of the Sicilian's seemingly forgotten commission for the not yet completed painting "Adoration of the Magi."  In that missive the painter signs off adoringly, referring to himself as Fabrizio's "most affectionate servant." 

But Valguarnera was not your archetypal 17th-century art patron, casually apportioning some of his fortune on grand commissions which showcased his religious, political, or social ambitions.  As fate would have it, he had been born into a noble family of more modest means, and failing to succeed at his quest to become physician to the Spanish Court, had come to rely on his art dealing to keep pace with those around him. 

But in a twist straight out of a TV crime series Valguarnera did more than simply buy and sell paintings.

In the summer of 1629 Valguarnera's Portuguese friend, Manuel Alvarez Carapeto, had been hired as a cashier for a syndicate of Iberian and Flemish merchants.  In this role, the gentleman was tasked with receiving and securing an important incoming shipment of rough diamonds belonging to the wealthy buyers which was scheduled to arrive from the East Indies aboard a vessel docking at the Port of Lisbon. 

Not for the faint of heart, the highly volatile diamond trade during this period was volatile.  Once the motor of Eurasian exchange, control of the flow of gem stones from India was no longer dominated by the Iberian crown.  

Merchant consortiums, like the one which had hired Carapeto, had only recently overcome a 1627 embargo on diamonds coming from the fabled Golconda mines, north of Pitt's base in Madras.  Known to Europeans since the time of Marco Polo, these mines —in the Godavari Delta— were then (still) the only known source of diamonds in the world.

To keep these diamonds flowing towards the insatiable European market, and at a profitable level, diamond merchants formed strategic relationships with highly placed traders who brokered powerful trade alliances with the backing of rich financiers.  Anchored by the funding provided by these syndicates, these networks formed the colonial arteries of period's diamond commerce, hoovering-up rough stones directly from indigenous traders before, during, and after the embargo and bringing them to the heart of Europe.

Diamonds, (as well as other jewels) were transported from India to Portugal in small leather draw-string bags, called bulse.  Light and discreet, the colorless gemstones were popular, not only for their value in jewellery, but because they were easily transportable, sometimes serving as a universal currency which was much lighter than gold and easier to conceal.  

Pouches containing the gemstones could also be easily be smuggled, hidden in nondescript containers like those which carried spices, or even in the wooden heal of a shoe worn by a ship's passenger.  Together with other contraband, smuggled diamond parcels could travel unregistered and arrive undeclared to the port in Lisbon, avoiding the payment of duties, a fact that in 1621 is even testified to by the records of Portuguese merchants.

After the Mughal embargo was lifted, to better secure their valuable cargo, diamonds could also be officially packed and marked with a cargo number, merchant's mark, and transport seals.  These bags would then be entrusted for safety with the captain or ship's purser, along with the stone's bill of lading, locked away for the duration of the voyage.  

Once the diamonds were delivered to their European purchasers, the raw stones would be sent to lapidaries who were just beginning to cut diamonds using the newly created techniques like the rose cut, inspired by the spiral of petals in a rose bud.  With laskes and table stones falling out of fashion, this innovative technique enhanced the diamond's brilliance and scintillation, giving the stones a larger, yet lighter, surface area that maximised the stone's carat weight.


But even if fuelled by the period's insatiable demand for more glittering jewellery that looked good by candlelight, the merchant's diamond trade was filled with risk, including any number of risks from unpredictable land and maritime conditions, to piracy, and as was the case with this story, outright banditry. 

Arriving to the port of Lisbon in October or November 1629, the consortium's  shipment of rough and laske diamonds were picked up at the moored Iberian galleon in the harbour by Domenico Fernandez Vettorino from “Hebbas” and Martino Alfonso della Palma receiving agents for Balthasare and Ferdinand de Groote.  The stones were then transported via a muleteer over the Pyrenees mountains, a formidable land barrier between Spain and Portugal. 

Once the journey from Lisbon to Madrid was complete,  the stones were to be received by a young Manuel Alvares Carapeto, acting as cashier for a banker named Mendez de Boito and the other diamond brokers.  He was tasked with holding the shipment until the stones could be apportioned to each individual stockholder, based on that merchant's financial contribution. 


Carapeto is recorded as having taken possession of thousands of diamonds.  However, almost immediately, he vanished.  

His mysterious disappearance was particularly enigmatic, as he left behind his young wife in the Spanish capital, a woman named Giovanna di Silva.  Even so, her abandonment failed to evoke pity among the frantic merchants, and instead raised their suspicions.  Had her husband, their emissary been ambushed?  Or was it more likely that Giovanna's presence in Madrid was simply an alibi; a emotional ruse played out to imply that her husband had either abandoned her for the jewels, or had been set upon by thieves.

Believing that Carapeto and his newly abandoned wife had played a role in the larceny of their diamond cargo, the brokers approached Fabrizio Valguarnera, who was known to have a relationship with the couple and who maintained a relationship with Giovanna even after Manuel's sudden disappearance.  The merchants offered the Sicilian a reward, hoping that through his intercession, Giovanna, or the missing husband, could be persuaded to hand back their stones, if he had skipped town, as they suspected.

On or around this period Manuel is said to have wrote to his friend, initially denying the theft and later admitted to it.  But still the diamonds were not returned.  Becoming increasingly frustrated by Valguarnera's seeming lack of progress, the merchants began to suspect that the cashier's art dealing friend, may have formed an alliance with Carapeto to keep the diamonds for themselves. 

Turning to intimidation, the tradesmen had Valguarnera followed.  They even went so far as to enlist enforcers, who confronted the nobleman, ambushing him one evening as he left Giovanna's house, in an attempt to extort him into revealing what he knew about the whereabouts of the stolen diamonds. 

Following that incident Valguarnera too hightailed it, vanishing from Madrid in March 1630. 

To find the fugitives, the merchants spent thousands of scudi, hiring private investigators to try and track the pair's movements in what would eventually grow into an international manhunt.  Focusing primarily on Valguarnera, as they believed he would be more recognisable and therefore easier to spot, the trackers searched for him in locations they believed a Sicilan noble gentleman may have fled to, had he intended to lay low and escape the bounty hunters.

Tesoro del Mondo,
1598-1600 f. 7v
Ars Preparatio Lapidum
by Antonio Neri
The merchants first sent their scouts to Barcelona, Seville, Messina, and Palermo—all cities Valguarnera wisely avoided.   To avoid anyone who might be linked to the merchants in the jewellery trade, he also steered clear of Europe's gem cutting cities, where rough diamonds were cut and mounted.

Instead, after vanishing from Madrid, Valguarnera travelled a circuitous route starting out in France, where he met up with the jewel thief Carapeto in March 1630 in the fortified city of Bayonne, in the Basque Country region of southwest France.  From there the two travelled as a pair heading south, with stops in Toulouse, Lyon, Orange and Toulon.

By June 1630 Carapeto and Valguarnera had made it to Genova, though they remained in the city only briefly.  Continuing farther south to Livorno, before pushing on to Naples, Fabrizio would later testify that his friend squandered the diamonds alla gagliarda or rapidly.

Upon reaching Naples in October of that year, Valguarnera sold nine diamonds to the second Principe di Conca, Giulio Cesare II di Capua, for eleven hundred scudi 
and purchased two paintings worth two hundred and sixty scudi using another two diamonds worth three hundred scudi, accepting a medallion and vase for the change. 

Unfortunately, historical records don't confirm when, or why, the two accomplices parted ways.  After his later arrest, Valguarnera told the investigators that he sent Carapeto back to Spain with thirteen pouches of diamonds stored in a small trunk so that he could return them to the brokers, something that seems highly unlikely given the penalty for thievery in Spain during the period for a theft of this scale ranged from imprisonment, forced labor, branding, amputation or even death. 

In any event, Valguarnera claimed that he lost contact with his cohort after receiving a final letter from him, sent from Genova.  Tales of the period claim that as Carapeto's frivolous purchases, using the diamonds on "clothing and whores" caused friction between the accomplices, his partner in crime considered eliminating him through nefarious means in order to  keep what remained of the stolen gems for himself.  Urban lore goes so far as to claim that the religious Sicilian was ultimately decided against murdering his companion, when the Virgin Mary herself spoke to him during a dream and warning him that such a dastardly deed would damn his mortal soul. 

What can be surmised is that at some point it simply made sense for the two men to distance themselves from one other.  Being of higher standing, Fabrizio's noble background afforded him some cover allowing his spending to go less noticed, likewise, working as an art dealer, he could more easily convert the cache of larger diamonds into artistic currency.   What we do know, from one of the last written documents recorded in this case, is that the pair likely remained at least tangentially on good terms, as Valguarnera's will and testament, written while he lay dying in prison, discussed sending funds to Careptos wife.

While on the lam, Valguarnera assumed the persona of Antonio Siciliano, buying and commissioning artworks using this not-so-original pseudonym.  When settling on purchases with those of higher standing, as well as when commissioning original artworks or copies of preexisting paintings from established artists, he paid for his purchases using the cache of stolen diamonds, or a combination of diamonds and local currency.

Harder to convince, were several of the up and coming artists he approached for commissions.  Leading more spartan lifestyles, the painters had little interest in being paid in gemstones they would find difficult and time consuming to convert.  Or perhaps they simply saw through "Antonio's" too simple ruse and simply wanted to avoid being asked awkward questions about how they came to possess valuable gemstones from far away mines.

Eight or nine months after the fateful diamond heist, Valguarnera arrived to Rome and is reported to have settled down in the city sometime between November and December 1630.  There, in 1631, he continued to close deals with artists and dealers and even went so far as to brazenly loan some of his new aquisitions to Don Matteo Catalano, the regent of the Roman church of Catalan Sicilians, for his June exhibition at Santa Maria di Costantinopoli.

But while Valguarnera was laundering the diamonds into painting purchases, playing man about town, the diamond merchants had lodged a formal theft complaint with the Governor of Madrid a month into his disappearance. This resulted in an arrest warrant being issued by the courts in Madrid. And despite having brokered his purchases and commissions using his assumed name, Valguarnera's shopping sprees  and his payment method using precious stones had people talking.  

Traced to a residence in Rome, on 12 July 1631 a complaint was registered with the Governor of Rome, filed in the names of: Balthasare and Ferdinando de Groote and one of the merchant investors, Paulo Sonnio, which outlining the theft of the gemstones and alleged that Valguarnera's international travels and artistic buying spree had been funded through the sale of the stolen diamonds.

The international merchant's request for arrest is intriguing as its execution in Rome prefigured a sort of informal letter rogatory, not unlike the international arrest warrants used between police agencies today.  In their deposition, the merchant representatives offered a reward, and listed the shipment of diamonds stolen in detail stating they were pietre straordinarie.

Their complaint listed a total of 6,979 diamonds stolen from the consortium. 

Some are detailed in t he complain as: 

Bulse 1, one polished diamond, “una pietra grande puntaquadrata” “in rozzo” valued at more than twenty thousand ducats,
Bulse 2, nine. 
Bulse 3, 4, and 5 were listed as come sopra, (as above), including one in which the diamonds are described as valued as quelati d'antique. 
Bulse 6 contains 500 polished laske diamonds 
the rest described as come sopra.   

Their formal complaint also illustrates that a group of private businessmen, several countries away, could still hold powerful sway in another countries regardless of the fact that the person being sought was of Sicilian origin living in Rome.  Documents in this case state that Valguarnera was arrested that same day the Spanish and Portuguese mens' filed their complaint in Rome, at a house he was sharing near the Monastery of S. Silvestro.  

But by the time this formal complaint arrived in Rome most of the diamonds had been laundered, exchanged for paintings or sold onward to jewellers for other purchases used to buy paintings. 

At Valguarnera's residence, officials found and subsequently seized an array of belongings, including a total of thirty-seven paintings, some of great value.  Also seized were: a silver clock which had four faces covered with red and gold ceramic; a silver ink-pot, etched with the coat of arms of the Valguarnera family; a box containing medallions of carnelian and cameos; a small box with three rings set with diamonds; and two pawn tickets written for other items written out by Isaac Tedescho Hebreo.   

Some curious items documented among Valguarnera's belongings include: "a little box, in a sack;  a stone of a porcupine from India; and the bones (relics) of Saint Simeon the Prophet and Saint Andrew.  The arresting party also seized Valguarnera supply of lapis lazuli which he had in both stone and powder form.  Ground and washed, this rare naturally occurring pigment was as expensive as gold and favoured by artists of the period to create ultramarine blue.

Due to the legal complexities of papal power, Valguarnera trial was a speedy one, expeditiously starting the very next day in Rome.

Before, during, and after his trial, the art dealer was confined to the pontifical prison, Tor di Nona, a medieval stronghold of the Orsini family, located across from Castel Sant'Angelo.  A dank and dire place, where prisoners ranged from ordinary criminals and heretics of the period to famous individuals including Benevenuto Cellini (himself charged with having stolen jewels from the papal treasury), Caravaggio, and Giordano Bruno.  

It was in this very court, 19 years earlier, a year after her rape, that Artemisia was brought to face her assulter, Agostino Tassi, an artist Valguarnera later had interactions with.  We know by that case, that under the judge's supervision, the female artist was tortured using the sibille (cords wrapped around the fingers and pulled tight) during her testimony, so one can assume that Fabrizio's interrogation, as well as his short-lived time in the prison's dungeons, were equally unsavoury.

Appearing in court on 13 July 1631 and throughout the summer as his trial progressed, Valguarnera initially insisted that he had not laundered someone else's diamonds and that his purchases had to do with his passion for paintings, even as his surely under extreme duress confessions directly contradicted his earlier documented actions.  He told his inquisitors fanciful stories including one where he said he  purchased eighteen diamonds from an old Spaniard, who dressed in greenish cloth and lived on via Frattina, paying this unidentifiable man seven hundred scudi in doppie, and again on a separate occasion a sack of embroidery pearls for an additional diamond.   

Valguarnera told investigators he took this group of diamonds to Alessandro Moretti, a lapidarist, returning later with another twenty-six carat diamond he claimed belonged to a prince in Naples.  In another instance he claimed to have pawned one diamond, as well as rubies and an emerald that he purchased in Livorno from Antonio Piscatore, the owner of a galleon. When Moretti, the diamond cutter, appeared in court, he confirmed several of the stories as being those Valguarnera had also told him. 

Witnesses at Valguarnera's trial amounted to "Who's Who" of celebrated artists in residence in Rome. 

Documents from Valguarnera trial, include statements from art dealers and some of the painters he purchased works directly from, including Giovanni Lanfranco (1582 - 1647), Alessandro Turchi (1578-1649), and Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665).  Each had half-finished artworks that they swiftly completed upon receiving lucrative commissions from the nobleman.  Turchi, also known as Orbetto, testified that Valguarnera had visited his workshop and commissioned Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, to be painted on a copper plate supplied by the client for the sum of two hundred scudi.  

The French artist Poussin reported that he too had refused the Sicilian's diamonds as payment, telling the court that he had demanded instead to be paid in scudi, as had fellow French artist Valentin de Boulogne, who touched up a painting, The Judgment of Solomon which the dealer had purchased from another collector/dealer in 1631.

The Judgment of Solomon by Valentin de Boulogne
Valguarnera visited Poussin's studio at the end of 1630 and at the his request, the Frenchman produced two original paintings, The Kingdom of Flora for ninety scudi, and a painting the artist called Il miracolo dell'Arca nel tempio di Agone, which is based on a story from the biblical Book of Samuel.  An extremely macabre subject for an easel painting, and perhaps a reflection of the contemporary experience of the bubonic plague outbreak which ravaged Italy from 1629 to 1631, this second painting depicts the miracle of the ark in the temple of Agone, and is now known as The Plague of Ashdod. 

This painting is based on the Old Testament account of an epidemic affecting the Philistines, as punishment for their destruction of the sacred Ark of the Covenant and for worshiping a false idol.  Paid for by Valguarnera in coin after it was completed, in  February or March 1631, this dramatic painting now hangs in the the Musée du Louvre. 

Nicolas Poussin's (upper)
and Angelo Caroselli's (lower)
versions of the Plague of Ashdod
Perhaps slyly, while Poussin’s work was not yet complete, Valguarnera almost immediately commissioned a second, almost direct copy of the the French painter's Plague, this time from a talented Roman copiest named Angelo Caroselli.  Completed with remarkable speed, just days before his arrest, Caroselli's work closely replicates Poussin’s narrative, with minor changes in the background.  

It is unclear if the art dealer intended to utilise the second artwork as a forgery of the first, or if Valguarnera was simply impressed with the depiction of the suffering masses which so recently and aptly mirrored recent plague events.  In either case, Caroselli's version of the painting now hangs in the National Gallery in London and carries the modified titled After Poussin. 

Interesting, from a documentation standpoint, Valguarnera's confiscated art assets were meticulously recorded, showing transactions involving 37 paintings, mostly works by living artists, including Pietro da Cortona who sold him a copy of his famous Il Ratto delle Sabine which now hangs in Rome's Musei Capitolini for one hundred and forty scudi and a diamond worth forty scudi. 

Il Ratto delle Sabine by Pietro da Cortona

Each artwork is described by its pictorial theme and size, listed as large, medium or small and demonstrates that the Sicilian purchased some paintings directly from their artist creators and others, like those by Italian Renaissance painters Correggio and Titian and early-Baroque artists Ludovico Carracci and Giovanni Lanfranco through dealers he knew like Ferrante Carlo, a member of the Borghese family, and Giovanni Stefano Roccatagliata.  When the haggling was complete, the latter were paid, sometimes in instalments, in stolen diamonds or jewellery pieces. 

But despite well documented details on the paintings Valguarnera purchased, the artists who created them and the sellers of these artworks, little is known about where most of the thousands of gemstones went.  Some have speculated that any evidence directly tying the Sicilian to the merchant jewel heist may have been intentionally hidden by Valguarnera while he was still on the lam, to avoid implicating himself to the theft.  

Others have hypothesised that the diamonds may have simply been liquidated into currency, or if found in Valguarnera's Rome residence, were made to disappear by those who had control over the incarcerated dealer at Tor di Nona in hopes of bribing his way out of custody, or used as payment towards improved prison conditions.  Possibilities documented in the records of other inmates held at the same prison. 

The last entry in relation to Valguarnera's trial is dated 7 September 1631.  A little less than four months later, he died in prison on 2 January 1632.  An entry on his incarceration record reads: "This morning D. Fabritio Valguarnera died, who found himself prisoner in Tordinona on the charge of the theft of diamonds after having been sick with fever many days."

Little mention is made of how most of Valguarnera's valuable possessions were disbursed after his death.  We do know that suffering from what may have been malarial fever, he dictated his will on Christmas day.  

In this document, the money laundering art dealer left Pope Urban VIII a cross in precious wood and the stone called Indian porcupine.  He also instructed his wife to build a chapel in the church of San Domenico or Maria del Carmine in Palermo, implying some wealth remained with or was sent to his widow, and lastly, he asked that 3000 scudi be sent to Manuel Alvarez Carapeto.

When Peter Paul Rubens's father in law, died in 1643 he left a considerable quantity of jewellery as well as a great many single diamonds, some polished and some rough.  One has to wonder if some of these passed through our Sicilian's hands. 

Leaving behind a legacy of mystery even after he died, one thing is clear, Valguarnera's exploits reveal how art, even in its golden age, could be both a canvas for human creativity and a mirror reflecting society’s darker impulses.  And these same vulnerabilities—manipulated provenance, possible forgery, and laundered funds and suspect transactions —persist in the art market today.

By:  Lynda Albertson

NB: For those who want to learn more about the Fabrizio Valguarnera arrest and trial, records on this incident are preserved in the Archivio di Stato, Rome ((cf. Appendix, pp. 269-84 ). Events discussed in this blogpost, including the chain of events immediately following of the crime and the events leading up to court action in Rome are taken from the initial complaint of 12 July (iii3r-iii6v) and the formal accusation of 6 August (ii97r-ii98v).

December 16, 2024

Monday, December 16, 2024 - ,,,,, No comments

From Heist to Cellar: The 45-Year Journey of a Stolen Masterpiece

As mentioned in our last blog post, it can sometimes take decades to recover a stolen artwork, or even longer. Such was the case with the 1979 cat burglar-style painting theft in which the thief abseiled thirty metres from one of the highest windows of the Pinacoteca di Palazzo dei Consoli in Gubbio, Italy, using a mountaineering rope. Once inside, the thief made off with a painting, the Madonna del Melograno, which depicts Mary gazing upon a delicately clothed Christ Child, with a youthful Saint John the Baptist to her left. The artwork was initially associated with the school of Filippo Lippi, but was later attributed to his follower, Pier Francesco Fiorentino (1444–1499).

Forty-five years later, the artwork was identified by the Italian Carabinieri when the painting’s current good-faith owner contacted law enforcement, having discovered the artwork in an underground cellar in the city of Imola.

Art theft cases are often more challenging to investigate than traditional thefts due to the unique nature of the stolen items and the specialised knowledge required to trace them.  Unlike mass-produced goods, artworks are typically one-of-a-kind or part of a limited series, making them harder to sell on the traditional art market, provided sufficient records have been kept by the original owners.  It is for this reason, that stolen paintings sometimes take decades to resurface or, as in this instance, are simply abandoned when the thief realises its a lot harder to sell a "hot" painting than he or she imagined, or when said thief does not have access to the kinds of buyers willing to purchase a stolen painting. 

Likewise, artworks can be concealed and transported across borders before being sold in locations where the source country’s theft records are unavailable, where they can sit unnoticed in good-faith buyer collections for decades.  It is usually during black market circulation that a painting’s provenance is fabricated or obscured and you begin to see stolen paintings in circulation on the licit market.  

Additionally, the high value and cultural significance of stolen art attract sophisticated criminals who often exploit gaps in international law enforcement coordination marketing these works to buyers after the statute of limitations for bad faith dealing has long past. Investigators must also contend with the niche expertise needed to authenticate art and must distinguish genuine pieces from forgeries.

As always, the first step in identifying stolen artwork involves dataset comparisons, as in the case of the Madonna del Melograno.  By finding points of commonality between documented archival photographs of the stolen artwork and close inspection of the suspect work, investigators can confirm on object match or determine if the work presented is a copy or forgery. 

On the left, the image of the stolen work provided to the Carabinieri TPC by authorities in Gubbio. On the right, the image of the seized work.

As can be seen by the highlighted areas, the Carabinieri were able to visually confirm that the painting found in the Imola cellar, was in fact the artwork which had been stolen by the cat burglar in Gubbio forty-five years ago. 

Monday, December 16, 2024 - ,,,, No comments

The Curious Journey of the Santa Rosa de Lima Statue: From Theft to Repatriation

On the final day of 2006, a significant piece of Mexico’s cultural and religious heritage was stolen. The polychrome Santa Rosa de Lima statue, a vibrant 3-foot-tall depiction of the beloved saint holding baby Jesus, vanished from a church in the town of Epazoyucan, in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. The statue, depicted the standing saint holding a child, and crowned with roses, represented more than artistic beauty; it symbolised centuries of devotion to the saint, said known for both her life of severe penance and her care of the poverty stricken in the Spanish Empire. 

For nearly a decade, the whereabouts of the statue were unknown. Then, in January 2017, the stolen artefact surfaced in an unexpected location: the Peyton Wright Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This gallery, known for showcasing valuable Pre-Columbian artefacts, as well as textiles, sculptures, and Spanish Colonial devotional objects, listed the statue for sale on its website, where its photograph caught the attention of Mexican authorities. The discovery in turn prompted an investigation by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), with special agent Robert Nelson taking the lead.

Tracing the Statue’s Journey

In March 2017, following discussions with HSI, gallery owner John Schaefer voluntarily turned over the statue to U.S. authorities before a search warrant was issued.  However, the mystery of how the statue crossed the Mexico-U.S. border remained unsolved.

Court filings and statements revealed that the statue had passed through several hands since its theft. Samuel Silverman, a businessman and former storage facility owner in New Mexico, had consigned the statue to the Sante Fe gallery.  According to Silverman, the religious statue had been abandoned by a former renter who left behind unpaid storage fees in 2007. After numerous failed attempts to contact the renter, Silverman sought to recoup his losses by consigning the statue to John Schaefer’s gallery. 

In April 2017, the statue was officially seized by U.S. authorities and placed in a vault at Homeland Security’s El Paso office. This marked a significant step in recovering the stolen object, but its journey back to Mexico would be far from swift.

The Long Road to Repatriation

Despite its identification and seizure in 2017, the Santa Rosa de Lima statue did not return to Mexico until December 2024—more than seven years later. The reasons for this delay remain unclear, as do details about whether legal disputes or bureaucratic hurdles contributed to the extended timeline.

Upon its return, questions arose about the statue’s condition. The figure of baby Jesus, previously depicted with both arms intact, appears to have suffered damage, with the child's right arm now being missing. It is unknown whether the damage occurred during its time in storage, transit, or elsewhere. 

Also of note, this is not the first time a stolen object has been identified at the Peyton Wright Gallery. In 2004, the Albuquerque Journal reported that US Federal agents seized a bas-relief carving from Mexico worth $225,000 from the gallery. That piece, like the Santa Rosa de Lima statue, had also been consigned by a third party, in this case, a Mexican national.

While the gallery cooperated with authorities in both instances, the pattern highlights the complexities of the art market, where stolen cultural heritage pieces can be bought or consigned and put up for sale by good faith purchasers despite having murky histories. 

A Case That Speaks to Broader Issues

The saga of the Santa Rosa de Lima statue underscores several broader issues in art crime identification and restitution, including: 

  • the challenges of tracking stolen art and artefacts (in this case it took 11 years for the stolen artwork to surface);
  • the slow wheels of international restitution, (from 2017 identification to 2024 restitution);
  • and the importance of vigilance within the art market (accepting pieces on consignment that have insufficient provenance).

For the town of Epazoyucan, the return of the statue is bittersweet. While the beloved icon is back, the years of uncertainty and the damage it sustained serve as a reminder of the vulnerability and fragility of the country's religious cultural heritage.

December 15, 2024

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Join ARCA Live this Friday to learn about ARCA's Art Crime Programmes

The General Application Period has just opened for ARCA's Postgraduate Programmes in Art Crime and Cultural Property Protection. Write to for an application package or join us live on Friday, December 20th at 20:00 CET to speak with ARCA's CEO about this summer's offerings. 

Meeting URL: 

Meeting number: 
2630 704 0356

Join from a video conferencing system or application
Dial: education@lyndaalbertson-204.my.webex.com

Join by phone
United States Toll: +1-650-479-3208
Access code: 2630 704 0356


Meeting number: 
2630 704 0356

Join by phone:
United States Toll: +1-650-479-3208
Access code: 2630 704 0356

Can't make it for the meeting?  Schedule a call with us one on one and we can send you an application packet by writing to us at: 



December 11, 2024

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 - ,, No comments

Budgets: The Weakest Link in Museum Security


 By Guest Blogger Bill Anderson, Founder and Managing Paartner of Art Guard

If diminished funding and smaller budgets aren’t enough to challenge the existence of many museums we were reminded of another glaring vulnerability. Smash-and-grab assaults occurred in two smaller French museums in the last several weeks. At the Cognacq-Jay Museum display cases were demolished by men wielding axes and baseball bats. Seven ornate snuff boxes valued at $1M were removed right in front of visitors. Two days later, in an apparently unconnected event, thieves walked into the Hieron Museum, fired shots and headed right for a display case housing a 10-ft tall figure of Christ encrusted with diamonds and rubies. Using a chain saw they easily dismantled the case and removed the jewels and some figurines worth an estimated $7M. In both cases the thieves left unchallenged.

There are a number of troublesome aspects to both of these thefts. Foremost is their seeming brazenness. How bold are thefts like this, though? Thieves are well aware that even large museums may be defenceless against this type of invasion during visiting hours. Armed guards can be an intimidation factor, but how willing are they to react with force when the public is present? Smaller museums have minimal personnel overseeing collections, to say nothing of an armed guard. The ease with which the thieves took specifically what they wanted in these two instances and escaped without pursuit can leave us breathless and wondering.

In both instances jewels were targeted, the least likely assets to ever be recovered. Once removed from whatever they adorn they can be sold, and precious metals melted down. Tim Carpenter, CEO of the consulting group, Argus Cultural Property Protection, says, “Considering the monetary value of some of the world’s most precious cultural heritage and the ease with which criminals can convert those commodities, it’s shocking at times to see how little effort is actually directed at protecting these irreplaceable works”.  There are no identifiers on jewels, unlike a painting or sculpture, whose images and data can be relayed to a knowledgeable and increasingly communicative art and auction market. The means of tagging gems with block chain identification is in the very nascent stages. Other strategies like using predictive technologies to scan crowds for likely suspects are worthless in the face of a sudden assault.

The hope, if not to prevent, is to slow the event to the point where a response may be timely. In both these instances the assets were soft targets in easily compromised cases. The technology for constructing vitrines has improved to the point where laminated glass for the hoods is not impossible to break, but very difficult. And the entry point to open the vitrine can be made hard to detect. Not to say that repeated hits with a sledge hammer won’t do the job, but if there is a glass break sensor inside it will surely trigger an alarm, as will object-specific sensors on the assets themselves to compound the immediacy of an alert. At that point the museum would be well advised to make it a loud alarm, in addition to an electronic notification to the police.

Reinforced vitrines and sensors can seem like a burden on small budgets, but if a thorough risk assessment and cost benefit analysis shows the value then these measures should be implemented, at the very least. After that the only recourse is investigation and forensics, if not the hope that one of the thieves will slip up and expose himself. Because the fewer cases solved the more encouragement there is for determined attacks, particularly by those criminals who are unafraid to use violence or force.

November 22, 2024

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This week's Hiéron Museum theft: Once, Twice, Three times a problem


The Musée du Hiéron is a gem in Paray-le-Monial, a town known for its medieval architecture and religious history.  Located in the heart of Saône-et-Loire, the museum is home to a rich collection that spans various periods of French history. These include archaeological finds, religious artworks, and regional historical objects that trace the area's development from ancient Roman times to the modern era. 

The museum, designated a national treasure, was created in 1904 by goldsmith-jeweller Joseph Chaumet, who was the who's-who of jewellery makers in Paris at the time.  It is especially noted for its focus on two thousand year's of religious history, reflecting Paray-le-Monial’s longstanding connection to Catholicism.  

This week however, it was that very religious history which drew the attention of thieves, for the second time...for the second time...but really for the third time. 

In the second daylight theft at a French museum in less than one week, yesterday, at approximately 4pm, thieves targeting the Hiéron in a rapid-fire and aggressive theft.  Arriving by motorbike, a group of four accomplices, stuck, their target, the museum's religious centrepiece, in what has been described as a well-coordinated and well-timed art heist.

Upon arrival, one of the culprits stood watch outside while three others dashed in, firing several shots overhead to intimidate the museum's employees and visitors.  They then made their way over to the museum's national treasure sculpture, the "Via Vitæ" ("The Way of Life").  

Purchased by the city for the museum in 2004, the 3 metre by 3 metre majestic artwork is considered to be jeweller Chaumet's masterpiece.  It took the goldsmith ten years of work (between 1894 and 1904), to create this epic piece.  Steeped in Christian faith, as well as alabaster, gold, precious stones, silver, diamonds, and rock crystal, his sculptural and figural work depicts the most poignant episodes recorded in the life of Christ.  

The sculpture' foundation is its backdrop mountain, carved in marble and symbolising the path of faith for Christian believers.  Here, the life of Christ plays out, from top to bottom, taking the viewer on a visual tour of the "path of life" where each of multiple scenes are filled with delicate chryselephantine (gold and ivory) characters.  

On the front of the mountain are scenes of the Nativity, the Sermon on the Mount, the Wedding at Cana, the Raising of Lazarus and the Last Supper.  Higher up on the mountain path, viewers see the Garden of Olives, Christ's flagellation and ultimately, three crosses on the hill of Calvary.  The host, symbolising the body of Christ, is brandished by two female figures standing at the top of the mountain, and is set with rubies and diamonds, with the central stone being a large, cut, rock crystal. 

On the back side of the mountain, there are various symbols representing Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism as well as, perhaps subliminally, the seven deadly sins.  In total, the sculpture includes 138 figurines, each one delicately accented in gold, as they illustrate all of the important stories and characters of the New Testament, not just the Christmas nativity. 

Once inside the museum yesterday, the thieves worked to access the sculpture through its protective glass barrier, placed in front of the artwork to provide security.  They then broke through this barrier, purportedly using an angle grinder and a chainsaw.  Once the glass was breached, the culprits quickly snatched as many of the small gold and ivory statuettes and jewel encrusted elements as they could and in just two minutes the deed was done and the thieves' escape was made. 

Not the first time

The Musée du Hiéron was already the victim of a burglary on 29 June 2017.  At the time, two gold Romay crowns: la couronne de Notre Dame de Romay and the couronne celle de l'Enfant Jésus, created by goldsmith Paul Brunet in 1897, were stolen.

On Sunday, 25 September 2022, a second burglary attempt occurred at around 4am, when three would-be thieves again tried to access the room that houses the "Via Vitæ", by attempting a break-in at the window.  Luckily, that time the alarm sounded and the would-be burglars fled empty-handed, in their haste, leaving behind the ladder they had used to access the window.

Impact on the Local Community

The impact of this week's theft on Paray-le-Monial, a town with a population of just over 10,000, has to been profound. For the residents and the staff at the Hiéron Museum, the loss of these objects is more than just a financial blow; it’s a cultural tragedy which sends ripples of concern across the tight-knit community, where the  cultural institution serves as a touchstone for local identity and pride. 

A Broader Concern for Small Museums

The Hiéron Museum theft is part of a troubling global trend that highlights the vulnerability of small cultural institutions to criminal activity.  Museums, galleries, churches, and private collectors have long been targets for thieves seeking to profit from the illicit sale of stolen goods, with plundered religious material being highly prized.

One of the most troubling aspects of the yesterday's theft is the nature of the stolen items.  The pieces were not just valuable in a monetary sense but also as sacred and irreplaceable symbols of people's beliefs and traditions. Theft will always be a tragedy for museums, but when it involves beloved artworks that have been part of a community’s fabric, the loss is truly and deeply felt. 

November 21, 2024

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Museum Theft: During the Musée Cognacq-Jay - Luxe de poche" Exhibition

Yesterday, thieves executed a daring daylight robbery at the Musée Cognacq-Jay, a museum located in the Hôtel Donon formerly owned by the eponymous family, and located in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris.                                                                                Around 10:30 a.m., four individuals armed with axes and baseball bats shattered a large glass display case in the museum, while wearing gloves, hoods, and helmets in order to conceal their identities selecting several of the most valuable pieces. The heist unfolded in front of visitors during regular opening hours, and no injuries were reported among staff and exhibition attendees.                                                                                                                                                            
All of the stolen objects were on loan to the museum as part of the temporary exhibition "Luxe de poche. Petits objets précieux au siècle des Lumières" which, because of its popularity, had been extended to run through 24 November 2024.  

The event showcased perfume bottles, candy boxes, music boxes, snuff boxes, and sewing kits decorated with gold, precious stones, mother-of-pearl or even enamels, highlighting objects from the 18th and early 19th centuries, which are representative of the Age of Enlightenment when precious objects like these were in vogue in France.  The event included objects loaned from the Château de Versailles, the Musée du Louvre, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Palais Galliera, the English Royal Collections and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. 


In total, seven highly valuable objects were taken by the thieves before they made a hasty exit, departing into the Paris traffic on scooters. 

The stolen material taken in the robbery are as follows: 

This gold snuff box dating from the 8th century and encrusted with agate cabochons made by Johann Christian Neuber , known for his gold snuff boxes, which he called Steinkabinettabatiere.  This object was on loan from the Musée du Louvre. 

This snuff box made of agate plates dating from 1760-1770, with hard stone reliefs, joined by a gold cage mount, and a lid encrusted with numerous brilliant-cut diamonds,  made by Daniel Baudesson, also on loan from the Musée du Louvre. 


This diamond-covered box belonging to King Charles III, described as a green jasper snuff-box, mounted with gold borders, finely chased with flowers and foliage in vari-coloured gold with panels and borders richly overlaid with baskets and sprays of flowers, trophies and foliage.  This object has nearly three thousand diamonds backed with delicately coloured foils in shades of pink and yellow.


This chrysoprase snuffbox made in Berlin, Germany, in ca. 1765, associated with Frederick II, the Great, of Prussia (1712-1786), previously on display at the Somerset House as part of the Gilbert Collection ©,  The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.



This c.1780 snuff box made by Johann Christian Neuber, one of the most celebrated goldsmiths in the history of snuffboxes which combined his own technique of Zellenmosaik, or mosaic of hardstones set into gold collets, with the technique of Roman micromosaics only recently developed, part of the Gilbert Collection ©,  The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.


This diamond-encrusted, varicoloured-gold snuffbox, decorated with figures in neo-classical landscapes, gifted to Thomas Dimsdale (1712-1800), by Catherine II during the Russian smallpox epidemic of 1768, , part of the Gilbert Collection ©,  The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Prosecutors have indicated that the French police are treating this as an armed robbery by a criminal gang. As motives are explored, it should be remembered that due to their intricate craftsmanship and historical significance, snuffboxes made of gold and other precious materials, have long been prized by organised criminals, in part because they are small enough to easy move.   

Other examples of snuffbox thefts

"The Fulford Thefts" occurred in 1981 when Temple Newsam House in Leeds was burglarised in a nighttime heist, resulting in the loss of 24 exquisite snuffboxes.   In that incident, the culprits, operating under the cover of darkness, targeted these highly valuable items due to their intricate craftsmanship and historical significance. The incident was named after the notorious criminal gang linked to the thefts, and remains one of the most notable art crimes in UK history from a stately home.  The recovery of some pieces from this theft took decades. 

On June 10, 2003, the Johnson gang carried out a high-profile theft at Waddesdon Manor, a historic estate in Buckinghamshire, England. The gang broke into the Rothschild collection housed at the manor and stole over 100 priceless items, including a significant collection of antique gold snuff boxes. The meticulously planned raid lasted only minutes, during which the thieves targeted small but immensely valuable £5 million collection, due to their portability and worth. 

The Cognacq-Jay museum has specified that it is closed while the investigation is underway and that it will reopen on Tuesday, December 10, 2024.  People who have purchased advanced tickets for the “Luxe de Poche” exhibition or for other activities will be automatically refunded.

November 17, 2024

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Crossposting: What happened during WWII at the Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris?


From time to time ARCA hosts blog posts found on other blogs, (with the permission of the author) to highlight blogs of importance in this under-studied field.  This Sunday's entry comes from Plundered Art, a perspective from the Holocaust Art Restitution Project and is written by one of that organisation's founders, who also teaches Provenance during ARCA's programmes. 

What happened during WWII at the Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris

 by Marc Masurovsky

I have to admit that historians are a strange lot, especially in the choices they make on what to research and write about. Whether they are aware of this or not, their choices, once published and commented on, shape our popular understanding of history and their omissions (what they are not interested in) deprive us of a fuller understanding of historical events, large and small. 

Take the Museum of the Jeu de Paume in central Paris. It is a typical example of this. Aside from the work of Emmanuelle Polack, there is not a single book that has been exclusively devoted to the history of the Jeu de Paume during the years of German occupation (1940-1944) of France. But there are at least 12 non-fiction books solely devoted to Rose Valland’s heroism and work as a French spy and a cultural property recovery officer for the French government.

The outside world may have experienced the historical Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris’ Jardin des Tuileries through the eyes of Rose Valland’s hagiographers. If you are a movie buff, you may catch a glimpse of it in “The Train” by John Frankenheimer, a paean to French railroad workers during WWII who tried their utmost to prevent France’s cultural treasures from being removed to Nazi Germany in the closing months of the German occupation of France. 

The rooms of the Jeu de Paume have been a regular feature on the French Ministry of Culture’s website for over a decade, illustrating its many rooms through contemporaneous black and white photographs made interactive so that you can discover the looted objects displayed there for Hermann Goering’s pleasure.

Do you really know what happened at the Jeu de Paume from Fall 1940 when it opened as a depot and processing station for confiscated Jewish cultural property to early August 1944 when it ceased to function as such? Do you know who worked there, what their jobs were, what objects they handled, how decisions were made day-to-day, why they chose certain objects and not others, their likes and dislikes, who hated who, who slept with who, the internal cliques? This is "perpetrator history" and it should not be ignored. Otherwise, you, we, end up knowing little about a fundamental cog in the machinery of cultural plunder devised by a perpetrator in the 20th century. History tends to repeat itself like an old cliché.

The Jeu de Paume was a laboratory of cultural plunder created by the perpetrators—the German occupying power and a Nazi plundering agency, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), its employees, experts and agents. It is therefore logical to dissect its internal mechanisms so that we can understand how looted, confiscated, misappropriated cultural assets are “handled” by those who carry out these crimes.
Alfred Rosenberg, founder of the ERR

To this day, the Jeu de Paume and the four-year long campaign of confiscation, processing, and dispersal of Jewish-owned cultural property reflects the dark side of the museum world and its cultural workers. Your involvement in the arts and cultural activities, whether as a producer or consumer, does not shield you from engaging in heinous acts as a deliberate cog in a machinery of racially-motivated exploitation, grand theft, and persecution. These people are your typical “collaborators”, persons who intentionally cast their lot with the new sheriff in town—in this case, the Nazis and their local Fascist supporters (in this case, partisans of the collaborationist Vichy government).

PS: The only "depot" of cultural objects that has received proper scholarly treatment is the postwar Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP) which supplanted Hitler's Führerbau as of May 11, 1945, as a central processing station for recovered looted objects. American cultural officials referred to in pop culture as the "Monuments Men and Women” managed the site. Dr. Iris Lauterbach of the Munich-based Zentral Institut für Kunstgeschichte is the author of that study.

The next article will be devoted to inventories, basic didactic instruments that document cultural plunder.

For more on WWII films with some mention of cultural plunder, check out:
For more on Rose Valland, see:
For more on the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, see:

 


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 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. 

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