But eThe picture reappeared a few weeks ago in an exhibition in the medieval town of Lucca, as the property of the politician and art critic.
The investigation by prosecutors into the disappearance of the painting
Prosecutors in northern and central Italy were investigating Sgarbi for theft of cultural property and expropriation of works of artreported the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano and the investigation program Report of the public channel RAI, in what would be a new case where a European official attacks national cultural heritage.
The latest and most resonant case was discovered last year in the British museum from where they disappeared near 2,000 small historical objects through small thefts carried out systematically over years.
The defense of the Undersecretary of Culture, Vittorio Sgarbi
While Sgarbi maintains that the work exhibited in the city of Lucca within the exhibition “The Painters of Light” is “a copy” of the Manetti painting lost 10 years ago, the Prosecutor’s Office of Macerata, the town where Sgarbi resides, requested that the Italian police interrogate a restorer and the owners of the Reggio Emilia company that would have made the copy of the canvas in question, valued at hundreds of thousands of euros and registered in the Interpol database of lost, missing or stolen works of art.
Before 2013, the painting was in the castle of Buriasco, owned by Margherita Buzio, who had refused to sell it to Sgarbi, after a collaborator of the official had offered to buy it.
According to the press, The woman reportedly reported that thieves had entered the castle, cut up and removed Manetti’s canvas, leaving a photograph of the work in its place. But the painting exhibited in Lucca would be different from that of the aforementioned photograph: a torch that is seen in the background of the canvas and that does not appear in the photographic capture that the complainant provided as evidence.
The chance of finding a painting from the 17th century
The undersecretary, for his part, said that He found the work “by chance” in Villa Maidalchina, a residence of the nobility acquired in 2000 by Rita Cavallini, his mother, and reiterated that it is a copy. Now researchers will have to check whether this is the case or not.
The suspicion is that Sgarbi there could be added a torch in the background of the original painting “to mislead” and not identify it as the stolen painting.
Who is Vittorio Sgarbi
It’s about a controversial officialprotagonist of numerous controversies in his country, such as the one in which he is accused of charging for advisory tasks despite his public position, something that Italian legislation has expressly prohibited since 2004.
No one who performs government duties is authorized in Italy to “exercise professional activities or work as a freelancer in matters related to their duties,” but the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano denounced the “golden cache” that Sgarbi would collect “despite the law”, an operation that would have brought him “300,000 euros in nine months.”
Source: Ambito
