Italian cultural heritage minister accused of laundering stolen artwork
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An Italian culture minister has been accused of having a torch painted on to a stolen 17th-century artwork so he could conceal it from investigators and keep it for himself.
Vittorio Sgarbi, the junior minister for cultural heritage, allegedly acquired The Capture of Saint Peter, a painting by the artist Rutilio Manetti, sometime after it was stolen from a castle in the northern region of Piedmont in 2013.
The oil painting, believed to have been painted around 1638, was cut from its frame and replaced with a colour photocopy. As a result, it was added to Interpol’s database of stolen items.
It is claimed that Mr Sgarbi acquired the artwork and hired a professional art restorer to paint a burning torch attached to a wall bracket in the top left of the painting to make it less identifiable.
The allegedly altered painting is now in the private collection of Mr Sgarbi, who is a high-profile art critic, collector and television personality as well as being the undersecretary for cultural heritage in prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s cabinet.
Opposition parties have called for Mr Sgarbi to resign, saying it is untenable for a cultural heritage minister to be accused of stealing his own country’s cultural heritage.
“Is it compatible with the image of Italy and the Italian government that a culture minister should be investigated for a stolen painting?” asked Giuseppe Conte, a former prime minister who is now head of the opposition Five Star Movement.
“Meloni and (Gennaro) Sangiuliano (the culture minister) should stop protecting Sgarbi” and suspend him from his post, the Democratic Party, the main centre-Left opposition, said.
Mr Sgarbi is being investigated for acquiring the artwork illegally and the laundering of cultural assets, according to prosecutors. He denies the accusations, saying the painting belongs to him.
He says he found it in a villa near Viterbo, north of Rome, a property where Pope Innocent X used to spend his holidays in the 17th century.
Mr Sgarbi put it on display in an exhibition in Lucca in Tuscany in 2021.
The painting bears the “chiaroscuro” technique pioneered by Caravaggio, with dramatic lighting contrasting with large slabs of dark background. It is worth around €300,000, according to Italian news reports.
“There is no mystery. There are two paintings,” the minister told an Italian television channel.
He said he had not been notified by prosecutors that he was under investigation and had no intention of resigning.
“I don’t know how I could be under investigation for a theft I have not committed and for a crime carried out 11 years ago in circumstances that were not explained by investigators at the time.”
He claims that the painting he owns is the original and that the one stolen from Buriasco Castle in 2013, which does not have a burning torch in its left-hand corner, was a “bad copy” that had been produced in the 19th century.
Mr Sgarbi pointed out that artists often made copies of well-known paintings so that several versions may exist.
However, art experts say the positioning and proportions of the figures depicted in the painting that the minister owns exactly match those of the painting that was stolen from the castle in Piedmont.
“Aside from the lighted torch element, which illuminates the architectural backdrop on the upper left side, the painting owned by (Sgarbi) is objectively identical to the painting stolen from the Buriasco Castle,” the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, a cultural heritage organisation, wrote in a lengthy analysis of the case.
Mr Sgarbi caused a furore last summer when he boasted, during an event at a modern art gallery in Rome, that he had slept with hundreds of women.
He told a startled audience that he regarded his penis as “an organ of knowledge, that is to say penetration”. While on stage, he took a call on his mobile phone and asked: “Who the f--- is this?”
He resisted calls by opposition MPs to resign.
Lynda Albertson, a criminologist and the chief executive officer of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, said: “The two paintings seem very, very similar. The dimensions and proportions would seem to match exactly.
“There was not the technology in the 1800s to copy paintings stroke for stroke, to copy the proportionality. But ultimately the determination will have to be made by experts on 17th century Italian art.”
