Rude against the Royal Museums of Turin: the fragment of Music paid 350,000 euros but is worth 100,000

Can a “fragment” of a painting be purchased for 350,000 euros when the author’s works have an average price of 100,000? This is the question posed by the Undersecretary for Culture, Vittorio Sgarbi, calling into question the Royal Museums of Turin and the Technical-Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Culture which operated in September 2022, therefore before the establishment of the new Government, to the acquisition of canvas that recomposes the figurative structure of the painting La Musica by Antiveduto Gramatica. “Behind the current administration, without the knowledge of the minister and the undersecretarywhich was informed by the Turin press – explains Sgarbi – the Royal Museums of Turin, a body that evidently considers itself independent of the Ministry of Culture, presented the modest, although defined as extraordinary, acquisition of a ‘Concerto a due figure’ by Antiveduto Gramatica , allegedly purchased by the Ministry of Culture, General Directorate of Museums, in September 2022, before the launch of the current Government, with the positive opinion of the Technical-Scientific Committee. We cannot understand the triumphalism of the managers of the Royal Museums of Turin for having reassembled, in however questionable way, two fragments of an ‘Allegory of music’ remembered in the collection of Cardinal del Monte in Rome». At a price, 350 thousand eurosthat “in all respects, cannot exceed 100,000 euros».

“The modest fragment – reconstructs Sgarbi – it was purchased, from what is known, by an English antique dealer, Derek Johns, after being exhibited at Tefaf in Maastricht at the ‘Carretto & Occhionegro Gallery’ with a request for 1 million euros, which fell to 350 thousand euros. Since it is a fragment, albeit connected to a work present in the Royal Museums of Turin, the fair market value of an Italian painting supposedly coming from the Torlonia collection, and exported in an indefinite period, according to all evidence, noIt cannot exceed 100,000 euros (see the ‘David triumphant with the head of Goliath’, intact, which appeared at Sotheby’s on 4 July 2019 and sold for 89,000 euros; the ‘Mary Magdalene and the two angels’ sold by Hampel on 3 December 2020 for 49,700,000 euros; the ‘Sibilla Tiburtina’ which appeared at Pandolfini in October 2022 for 12,000 euros; the ‘Salomè’ which appeared at Sotheby’s on 8 December 2016 for 70,458 euros). «It is therefore not clear – adds the Undersecretary – the legitimacy, by the Technical-Scientific Committeeof a price outside the Italian market and bought on the most expensive market in the world, after years of mortification by Italian antique dealers with bonds and notifications of paintings that cannot be purchased, of far greater interest. I am referring, for example, to the remarkable painting by Pietro Paolini notified in Turin to the antiquarian Voena. Under these conditions, how can one consider the acquisition of the fragment of Antiveduto Gramatica, arbitrarily defined as a ‘masterpiece’, to be considered ‘extraordinary’?

The Royal Museums of Turin have announced that Gramatica’s Concerto a due figure (1569-1626) has become part of its collection and that the canvas, combined with the theorbo player, recomposes the figurative framework of the painting “La Musica” , recorded in 1627 in the inventory of the Roman collection of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, a great collector of Caravaggio and Gramatica. From 28 February to 5 March 2023, the two masterpieces reunited after four centuries are exceptionally exhibited on the first floor of the Galleria Sabauda, ​​in one of the rooms dedicated to the Caravaggio masters and recently rearranged. The two canvases will be presented to the public again, after in-depth diagnostic investigations, in the exhibition “The Music of Antiveduto Gramatica and the Falletti di Barolo collection”, scheduled from 9 June to 1 October on the second floor of the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.