Vasari auction falls through
Last-minute appeal scotches sale
09 March, 12:05
(ANSA) - Arezzo, March 9 - An auction of the papers of
Giorgio Vasari, the Italian Renaissance artist credited with
founding art history, was called off at the last minute Tuesday.A lawyer for the aristocratic Festari family, owners of the letters to contemporary giants like Michelangelo, said the auction judge had accepted an appeal against the allegedly low starting price, 2.6 million euros.
The archives, one of the most precious insights into the early years of the Italian Renaissance, have been independently valued at up to ten times that.
The lawyer, Alberto Marchetti, also claimed the family had not received the information needed to settle an 800,000 euro tax debt in time to allow the auction to proceed.
"We just got it a quarter of an hour before the auction was due to start".
Marchetti handed over the successful appeal as the widely anticipated auction was just getting started.
Equitalia, the inland revenue office, said it had to accept the auctioneer's decision.
On hand to bid were representatives of the Italian cultural ministry who said they hoped to have a chance to bid " at some time in the future". In addition to an assortment of Vasari's own notes, the Vasari papers contain letters from figures like Michelangelo, 16th-century Tuscan potentate Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, and a number of popes.
There has been some confusion as to the ownership of the archive with an Italian bank recently reported to have seized possession after the late Count Giovanni Festari fell heavily into debt some years ago and tried to sell them.
But the count's heirs have denied this.
The purported buyer was an unnamed Russian gas magnate, who allegedly bought the papers for 150 million euros but turned out to have died two weeks before the sale took place.
Arezzo authorities asked the culture ministry to intervene after lawyers told them the state had six months to match the offer before the sale went through.
But culture officials were unconvinced that the offer was legitimate and asked Rome prosecutors to investigate.
The Vasari papers are in any case bound to his historic home in Arezzo by a culture ministry statute that makes their ownership largely symbolic.
They cannot leave the Tuscan hilltop town.
A lawyer representing the Festari family claimed the supposed Russian buyer understood the papers couldn't be moved but wanted to buy them anyway.
In fact, the papers were never sold, giving rise to speculation that the 'Russian bid' was merely a ruse to lure the government into making a competing bid far in excess of what the papers were actually worth.
One such sceptic was Milan's former culture chief and prominent art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, who said that the papers, while precious, were worth ten million euros at most.
Equitalia seized the papers in November and put up for auction.
Vasari (1511-1574) is best known for his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, a series of biographies chronicling the lives and careers of Italy's Renaissance masters.
The work became a canon of western art history, overshadowing his work as an artist and architect.
A highly acclaimed painter in his time, Vasari also designed the famous loggia of the Palazzo degli Uffizi in Florence, one of the city's most celebrated landmarks.
