Thieves make off with 1mn Mastroianni works from Vittoriale

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 7 - Some 20 gold statues and 30 jewels by 20th century Italian abstract sculptor Umberto Mastroianni on show at the former home of poet and nationalist proto-Fascist Gabriele d'Annunzio at the Vittoriale at Lake Garda were stolen a day before the exhibit was due to close, in a one-million-euro heist.
    The theft of the works, which had been on show since December 30 last year at the Vittoriale degli Italiani at Gardone Riviera, in the province of Brescia, was discovered by the managers of the Vittoriale who, when they opened the doors in the morning, found all the exhibition spaces empty.
    The Carabinieri of the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit, Italy's crack art cops, are investigating.
    The exhibition, Like A Hot And Fluid Gold, The Golds of Umberto Mastroianni, was curated by Alberto Dambruoso on the basis of a project by Cigno GG, and held at the Museo d'Annunzio Segreto.
    The famed sculptor was the uncle of screen legend Marcello Mastroianni.
    The show featured rings, bracelets, brooches, pins, other jewels, and sheets of metal and sculptures fashioned by the sculptor between the 1950s and the 1990s with the technique of 'lost wax' or 'golden stream' melding.
    The Vittoriale degli italiani (English translation: The shrine of victories of the Italians) is a hillside estate in the town of Gardone Riviera overlooking Lake Garda in province of Brescia, in Lombardy.
    It is where poet and novelist D'Annunzio lived after his defenestration by Mussolini in 1922 until his death in 1938.
    The estate consists of the residence of D'Annunzio called the Prioria (priory), an amphitheatre, the protected cruiser Puglia set into a hillside, a boathouse containing the MAS underwater vessel used by D'Annunzio in 1918 and a circular mausoleum.
    References to the Vittoriale range from a "monumental citadel" to a "fascist lunapark", the site inevitably inheriting the controversy surrounding its creator. (ANSA).