The letter with which Columbus
announced the discovery of the 'New World' to the Spanish royal
family, stolen from Florence's Biblioteca Riccardiana and given
back a few weeks ago by US authorities is only one of the many
important pieces included in the Arte Ritrovata exhibition.
Others include a Canaletto and a funerary stele from
excavations in Palmyra, which was found in the home of a Padua
resident involved in money laundering towards countries in the
East.
The key element of the exhibition - which opens on June 9
and runs through July 3 at the Museo Storico dell'Arma - is that
all the masterpieces and archaeological finds included have been
recovered by the Italian military police Carabinieri's section
focusing on artistic heritage protection.
General commander of the Carabinieri Tullio Del Sette noted
that the works of art and finds are only a small part of what
they have recovered and that another, more complete exhibition
will soon be held in the capital.
In the meantime, the current exhibition is free of charge.
Some other examples include vases illegally excavated from
Magna Grecia sites and found by investigators in the catalogues
of New York auction houses or in museums in the US, such as at
the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Minnesota), which had bought
it from an Italian dealer and later gave it back to Italy on
finding out that it had been of illicit origins.
Others include works taken in the 1970s from a house in the
countryside near Guidonia Montecelio (Rome) and a large
Canaletto that was recovered in 2015 at the Florence train
station when it was headed for an auction house in the
Principality of Monaco and an important work attributed to Guido
Reni that was recovered in a major bank, which the owner of the
canvas has accused of misappropriation.
The general who leads the Carabinieri's cultural heritage
section, Mariano Mossa, noted that they had a large databank
that "is often fundamental for our investigations".
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