Florence, Sgarbi shops the Biennale for Rovereto's Mart. And thunders against self-protection

It bears the signature of Vittorio Sgarbi the first stroke of the Florence Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato that will open the day after tomorrow at Palazzo Corsini (a preview for journalists was scheduled today). In fact, Sgarbi has bought for the Mart - Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, of which he is president, a beautiful sculpture by Felice Casorati (Novara, 1883 - Turin, 1963), La dormiente, a plaster bas-relief of 1924, presented by Gian Enzo Sperone, and among the best works of the great antiques fair in Florence (on these pages we had also reported it among the previews). It is a sculpture that was part of a decorative cycle that the Piedmontese artist made for the private Teatrino of Casa Gualino (industrialist Riccardo Gualino, one of the greatest Italian collectors of the early 20th century, had a close relationship with Casorati). Specifically, the decoration consisted of two statues flanking the proscenium and fourteen bas-reliefs serving as metopes: The Sleeper was one of the bas-reliefs.

The work just acquired by the Mart is of great significance because it represents one of Casorati’s first ventures into a decoration that contemplated architecture and sculpture. “It was an act of courage,” Gualino wrote, “to grant carte blanche to a painter for him to do architecture. I hoped that, precisely because he was immune to the rules of tradition, Casorati would solve the problem in an original way. My expectation was not disappointed. The room is rectangular, gray in color; the ceiling simple in angular silhouettes. A band about a meter high between walls and ceiling having a series of bas-reliefs, illuminated by hidden light, is the decorative note of the room and at the same time the only source of light.” Gualino had had a real theater set up at his home from which one could access the rooms that housed his works of art (guests often attended the performances given by the industrialist, and then ended the evening in his home), part of which can be seen today at the Galleria Sabauda in Turin. The Sleeper thus joins at the Mart another work by Casorati formerly in Gualino’s collection (albeit in the second collection, the one he started in Rome after the collapse of his companies), and now preserved in the Trentino museum, namely the Ragazza di Pavarolo, also known as Clelia.

During the press conference, Sgarbi, who made a surprise speech in closing, addressed harsh words against some recent cases of the use ofself-protection, which allows the state to cancel a measure taken previously. Sgarbi, in particular, recalled the recent case of Jacopo Bassano’s Miracle of the Quails, which was first granted a license to export, and then, after the painting was sold to the Getty Museum, the measure was was withdrawn and the painting notified, opening a legal dispute between the antiquarian Frascione who sold it and the Getty who bought it on the one hand, and the state on the other (a detailed reconstruction of the case can be read on Windows on Art ). Sgarbi said, “A civil relationship between the state and art dealers needs to be restored. The relationship is absolutely uncivil: it also applies to the case that runs through the merchants’ halls in these hours, which is the Frascione case. It is an international case: it is a painting of important quality by Jacopo Bassano, owned by Frascione for sixty years, which could find an Italian outcome without difficulty, and which cannot be allowed to be recognized as a masterpiece by a Fine Arts official. If he does not recognize it, and gives it free circulation, that painting can go to any museum in the world: self-protection is an act against the state and against the rights of a civilized state in which everyone does his own work. Do you have the ability to check? Check! If you have not evaluated, do we have to do the verification of the official doing the verification every time?”

Sgarbi, in order to prevent a recurrence of cases like these, proposes setting up a committee of merchants to suggest to the state which items to buy before they go on the market. “I intend to suggest this to the next government,” says the art historian. Sgarbi recalled two cases in which he has been a protagonist in this regard: the first in 1995, when the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena bought an important group of paintings from the 16th-17th centuries in Siena (including works by Rustichino, Francesco Vanni, Rutilio Manetti, Bernardino Mei, Astolfo Petrazzi, Niccolò Tornioli) for the sum of 2 billion lire, and the second in 2000, when together with Antonio Paolucci, then superintendent of the Polo Museale Fiorentino, he negotiated for the city’s museums some paintings from the legacy of antiquarian and collector Carlo De Carlo. “We left free all the work that he wanted to sell,” Sgarbi recalls, “taking five works that ended up in museums, like saying a passage of dialogue with the state in which you donate to the state and in return you have the freedom to sell what the state has not bound and does not want to buy. These are models that I have already applied, but they are necessary models so that we do not continue a senseless war of small, incompetent officials blackmailing antiquarians through threatening acts that lack dignity. Self-protection is nonsense! The man who knows, knows immediately, not after two years or after two months.”

Therefore, the solution could be the committee that provides suggestions to the state: “I would imagine that the quality of many antiquarians would determine a committee of proposals to the state that can thus establish a privileged buying relationship (a kind of pre-emption): it would be necessary for the museum directors to have the suggestions of ten of the best art dealers in order to have in first proposal the offer of masterpieces. Therefore, an arrangement should be established between the merchants and the state, which should be put in a position to know beforehand about objects offered in advance. This can be done in a simple way, without threats or self-defense. If a merchant has insight he must be rewarded and not punished, this is obvious: the state must be honest, not threatening, it must be in relationship with people who are capable of giving. This is a formidable exhibition with at least twenty works worthy of Italian museums. To those museums they must go, in an arrangement and without blackmail, threats, notifications and senseless self-protection. This I wanted to say, with affection.”

Florence, Sgarbi shops the Biennale for Rovereto's Mart. And thunders against self-protection

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