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.
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