In 2013 Giuseppe Tornatore painted a disturbing fresco of the world of art dealers. The Best Offer was a thriller like the many that cinema has produced on the subject. The story we are about to tell is a semi-detective story that from Naples he takes us to Madrid, bounces to Genoa to glide to Florence where starring Fabrizio Moretti, art dealer and general secretary of the International Antiques Biennial.
It’s the story everyone’s talking about these days and it’s about the Ecce Homo that on April 8 the Spanish auction house Ansorena was selling for 1500 euros, proposing it as a Crowning with Thorns of the circle of José de Ribera, and whose sale was blocked after merchants and art historians had questioned its attribution. According to them, led by Maria Cristina Terzaghi curator of the recent exhibition on the seventeenth-century master at the Capodimonte Museum, it would be that Ecce Homo that Caravaggio had painted in Naples in 1605 for Cardinal Massimo Massimi, and which, since 1659, would be in Spain (which would make the one in Palazzo Bianco in Genoa a fake). It is at this point that our story reaches Florence from where our Moretti – given the photos that we publish here sent to him to inform him of the possible coup (buy a Caravaggio for 1500 euros) – on the 7th flew in a hurry, destination Madrid. “For me – he tells us today – there is no doubt about the attribution to Caravaggio”. Then he continues: «There are many details that make me think of it: the presence and also the position of the balustrade that detaches and highlights the figure of Pilate while showing Christ; the narrative capacity that emerges from the scene depicted, as dynamic as in a film in the manner of Caravaggio; the bold and impulsive brushstrokes typical of genius and, I believe, also the color. I am convinced that that red of the mantle, after the necessary cleaning of the painting, will turn out to be really Caravaggesque “.
Moretti’s observations expand to also touch the analysis of the figure of the soldier to the left of Christ and his open mouth with an expression of dismay that would recall, to a lesser extent, that of the Medusa of the Uffizi. All signs that they had started him on the eve of the auction to score that coup that he failed. «For me it is one of the greatest discoveries of recent years – he continues – I believe that if I had bought it I would have done it to resell it, and on the other hand my profession is that of an art dealer. A painting like this can be worth 200 million euros and I believe that museums like the Getty in Los Angeles would have been tempting ”. But … Nothing in fact. “Now Spain has blocked its export – concludes the antiquarian – and Maria Cristina Terzaghi has been called as a consultant by Prado who will want to do it with a private transaction. I tried it too: when the auction house blocked the auction, I tried to bid, but it was not successful ».
April 13, 2021 | 07:20
© Time.News
.