Manetti case, according to The Fact Sgarbi is under investigation. But the undersecretary: I have not received notices

The case of the Rutilio Manetti painting owned by the Cavallini Sgarbi Foundation that was exhibited between 2021 and 2022 at the I pittori della luce exhibition held at the Cavallerizza in Lucca continues to hold sway. With Sunday’s episode of Report and the articles that came out last week in Il Fatto Quotidiano, the story was enriched with further details. The program and the newspaper reconstructed the case as follows: in February 2013, the owner of Buriasco Castle, Margherita Buzio, noticed that a painting by Rutilio Manetti owned by her was stolen and replaced with a printed reproduction of the same size. In May of the same year, the work reappeared in Brescia, delivered by a Sgarbi collaborator to restorer Gianfranco Mingardi: according to Report and Il Fatto it was the canvas stolen in Buriasco, while according to Sgarbi the painting came from Villa Maidalchina, a property near Viterbo purchased shortly before by his mother, where Manetti’s canvas was allegedly found in an attic. The new details concern precisely the passage through restoration workshops: according to Il Fatto and Report, a fragment of the canvas found in Buriasco would coincide perfectly with one of the holes photographed by Mingardi in his workshop.

Report and Il Fatto ’s investigation then revealed a further passage, in 2019, at the studio of restorer Valentina Piovan. When heard by journalists, Piovan denied having added the torch that can be seen in the painting exhibited in Lucca, the only element that differentiates it from the one in Buriasco but which, according to what was seen in the Rai Tre broadcast, would turn out to have been added later because the craquelure on the rest of the canvas does not appear near the torch. Report and il Fatto then went to the company GlaB, which in 2020 made a high-fidelity digital reproduction of the Rutilio Manetti painting owned by Vittorio Sgarbi, in every way identical to the original except for one element, banding, that is, a group of horizontal lines due to the printing process, which can be seen in one point of the painting, the step near the dog, in the lower portion. In the very high quality scan of Sgarbi’s work, moreover, the compensations of the gaps would be clearly discernible, perfectly matching those of the stolen work according to what was seen in the transmission. Finally, the reproduction made in Correggio would be exhibited in Lucca instead of the original: in January 2022, a photographer visited the exhibition and took a picture of Manetti’s work, and in this photograph the banding would be seen, so it would be, Report explained, a demonstration that the work exhibited is actually the copy made by Glab.

This morning, Il Fatto Quotidiano and some news agencies reported that there would be a file with Undersecretary Sgarbi on the register of suspects, as well as a first hypothesis of crime. “At the center,” writes the Fatto, "the hypothesis of theft of cultural property in relation to a painting by Rutilio Manetti, stolen from the castle of Buriasco in 2013 and reappeared in Lucca eight years later, as recounted by the same Fatto along with Report, where it was presented as ’unpublished’ and with a detail (a candle) that was not in the canvas that disappeared from Piedmont." According to the Fact , the investigation had been opened in Imperia and then turned over to Macerata due to territorial jurisdiction, since Sgarbi is domiciled in San Severino Marche, the city of which he was mayor in the 1990s.

Sgarbi, however, defends himself, claiming that he did not receive notices. “Once again ’Il Fatto’ lies, using confidential information that is completely unknown to me and my lawyer,” the undersecretary let it be known through his press office. “I have not received any notice of investigation. Nor would I know how to be investigated for a theft that I did not commit. And for a crime committed 11 years ago, under circumstances not clarified by the investigators at the time. This news report shows a blatant violation of the investigative secrecy, the only crime of which there is evidence. From what we read, the work has been badly cut. And the one in my possession is in good condition and with a well-preserved and uniform pictorial layering. Any assessment should be made on the work of which the stolen one is manifestly a copy, like all those kept in that castle that no one cared about. Nor do I think it is a crime to have a photograph taken of a work of which all the experts have seen the original exhibited in Lucca. That the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Imperia has forwarded the acts to Macerata as the competent seat is news that might make sense, if, as the law provides, I were aware of it. But that is not the case. In fact, it should be a magistrate, not a journalist, who should determine what to investigate and the complicities of restorers and photographers, improvised accusers, but who could turn out to be accomplices to more serious crimes and omissions.”

In the photo below, Sgarbi at the Lucca exhibition.

Manetti case, according to The Fact Sgarbi is under investigation. But the undersecretary: I have not received notices

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