Gold Funds from Switzerland. Carabinieiri recover two works entering the collection of Florence's Accademia Gallery

Presented today at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence are two paintings illegally exported and confiscated by the Operational Department of the Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale Command and now destined for the collection of the famous Florentine gallery.

Two gold-backed panels that until 2003 belonged to a private Florentine collection; these were illegally exported to Chiasso in Switzerland and hidden in a private vault. In 2006, investigative activities began under the coordination of the Rome Public Prosecutor ’s Office, and acriminal association consisting of Italian professionals and a London antiquarian involved in theillicit export of cultural goods was identified. The two works returned to Italy in 2009; in 2017 they were annexed to the State Heritage and the following year were entrusted to the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence.

One work depicts St. Jerome and St. Julian, is datable to around 1385 and is attributable to Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, a painter who worked in Florence in the late 14th and early 15th centuries; the other work depicts the Madonna of Heavenly Humility with a martyred saint, a holy bishop, St. Peter and St. John the Evangelist and was intended for private devotion. The panel can be attributed with certainty to the Master of the Bracciolini Chapel, an unknown painter who was probably active from about 1385-90 to 1420 in Pistoia and the surrounding area, and can be dated to around 1400.

Cecilie Hollberg, director of the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, said, “The Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale has once again done a careful and persevering job, an effort that, with the assignment to the Gallery, ends to everyone’s great satisfaction. Since we are dealing with important painters, we will gladly find a placement for the two panels of a size that is not exaggerated and therefore manageable. The pictorial quality as well as the colors, especially of Gerini, whose other works we have in the museum, is exceptional. Whereas, by the Master of the Bracciolini Chapel, this is the first work to come to us, an absolute rarity. In the three years that I have been director of this museum, we have managed to acquire about a dozen new works that we will present in an exhibition in January.”

The two works will be on view to the public from January 14, 2019 at the temporary exhibition"New Acquisitions between 2016 and 2018."

Image: Master of the Bracciolini Chapel - recto

Gold Funds from Switzerland. Carabinieiri recover two works entering the collection of Florence's Accademia Gallery

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