2024-02-12 16:15:43
Italian Deputy Culture Minister Vittorio Sgarbi will leave his post amid suspicions of the theft of a painting.
As Day.Az reports with reference to TASS, the Corriere della Sera newspaper reported this on Friday.
“I will immediately resign from the post of deputy government minister and will inform Georgia Meloni about this in the coming hours,” the publication quotes Sgarbi’s statement.
On January 12, it was reported that the politician and art critic were suspected of stealing a 17th-century painting and falsifying the history of its origin. It is believed that this is a painting by the Siena school artist Rutilio Manetti, which disappeared from a castle in Piedmont in 2013. In 2021 it was exhibited in Lucca as a painting from Sgarbi’s personal collection. At the same time, the work was restored and “tweaked”, supposedly to hide its origin. The politician denies all charges.
Vittorio Sgarbi is a fairly well-known and popular character in Italy, always distinguished by his extravagant behavior. He was repeatedly elected to parliament, most recently from Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, from which he subsequently left. He was well acquainted with the ex-prime minister and, as he said, often represented him in sensitive personal and political matters. Now Sgarbi is the only politician holding positions in the government who openly advocates the inadmissibility of the abolition of Russian culture. He was a guest of the Russian Embassy in Rome in November at a concert of pianist Valentina Lisitsa, who came under restrictions in Europe because of her position on the Northern Military District and the Ukrainian conflict.