Statue destroyed by influencer tourists, how much is it really worth? According to the broker, a modest amount

How much is the sculpture destroyed by a group of German tourists, including two influencers, last week at Villa Alceo in Viggiù really worth ? Corriere della Sera, one of the first newspapers to report the news of the destruction of Enrico Butti’s sculpture, spoke of a value of 200,000 euros, even including the alleged value in the headline. But according to the young Anglo-Italian broker David Sayn Calarco, the work’s economic value would be decidedly more modest. It starts with a premise: “The destruction of an artifact is always a sin,” says the expert. “In the specific case, I don’t think it was an act of vandalism, but a silly stunt that resulted in the accidental destruction of the artifact. Justice will ascertain intentions and responsibility.”

Sayn Calarco is not convinced that the work is by Butti. The Lombard artist, who lived between 1847 and 1932, was a valid sculptor with a Risorgimento and patriotic matrix, whose style is characterized by “a good dose of realism tempered by more dreamlike elements,” the broker says. “A native of Viggiù, a locality historically devoted to stone carving, he soon came to discreet fame. Known in his maturity especially for bronzes, Butti was trained in marble working, showing an early talent for copying works by the great masters of the time. For this reason, too, to think that he could have sculpted a statue like the one unfortunately destroyed does not make sense, even if one were to attribute it to his younger years. The training of sculptors of the time, in fact, was marked by a serious, expressive realism that has nothing to do with the looseness of the work in question, which is rather typical of anonymous statuary groups depicting the four seasons, produced by the hundreds and intended for the gardens of the bourgeois residences of the time.”

The work, Sayn Calarco says, is not signed, nor is it documented to him. “Moreover,” he adds, “a simple ocular comparison between known sculptures by the artist and the quality of execution of the work in question (traits such as the rendering of the eyes and mouth) is enough to realize that the latter cannot be by Butti. Compare the sculpture in question even with the Funeral Monument to Isabella Airoldi Casati of 1890-91 (Monumental Cemetery in Milan), or the youthful Eleonora d’Este visits Tasso in prison (St. Petersburg).”

And then, it was said, there is the issue of economic value: according to Sayn Calarco, it is a mistake “to take for granted a value fluctuating between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand euros,” a figure he called “fanciful.” “It takes only five minutes to verify that the most expensive marble by Butti ever sold that is given to trace has realized ten thousand euros, and it is a signed work, in perfect condition, and of superior quality (Bonhams London, October 28, 2008, £9000). Whoever wrote about it should have asked himself questions, since in no case could one speak of a value higher than a few thousand euros if the author was Butti, and a few hundred euros in the case of an anonymous garden statue, which I believe it is.”

The civil or criminal responsibility for the destruction of the work, Sayn Calarco concludes, “will certainly be investigated and established by the investigators, and it is to be hoped that the real extent of the damage will be professionally established according to market values. For the rest of us, however, there is an opportunity to rediscover a valuable artist who has been totally forgotten, and to pour the feeling of indignation into concrete actions aimed at heritage protection and enhancement.”

Statue destroyed by influencer tourists, how much is it really worth? According to the broker, a modest amount

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