LETTER FROM ROME
The Ministry of Culture in Giorgia Meloni's government is occupied by a peculiar junior minister. Vittorio Sgarbi, a 71-year-old art historian and critic, is as famous for his conferences and books on Italian Renaissance painting as he is for his public and televised outbursts, which sometimes combine crude vulgarity with polemical stances. Since the beginning of 2024, his public image, already familiar with legal matters, has gained new prominence due to the opening of an investigation by the Italian prosecutor's office. The inquiry is connected to a tortuous case involving the theft of a painting.
It all began in December, when the "Report" magazine on RAI 3, one of Italy's public television channels, broadcast an investigation into this atypical member of the executive, which unites the right and far-right under the banner of the president of the council. The focus is on a painting attributed to the 17th-century Italian painter Rutilio Manetti, entitled The Capture of St. Peter, and the role it played in Sgarbi's affairs. According to the program's journalists, the painting was shown in 2021 as part of an exhibition organized in Lucca (Tuscany) by the future junior culture minister. However, the painting is almost identical to a work stolen in February 2013 from the castle of Buriasco, in Piedmont.
The owner, Margherita Buzio, claimed to have been visited prior to the theft by a person coming to make an offer to buy the painting, and who was identified by the TV show as belonging to the art critic's entourage. A few weeks later, the painting was stolen after being cut up and removed from its frame.
Also in 2013, the same Sgarbi associate entrusted a similar work to a restoration expert, Gianfranco Mingardi. One detail, however, distinguishes the stolen painting from the one that ends up in the hands of the craftsman presented as "The Capture of Saint Peter." In the upper left-hand corner of the canvas, a torch appears, surrounded by a halo of light that pushes back the darkness of the background. On the work in question, that part of the composition is perfectly dark.
The restorer told RAI journalists that it was the same painting, but that the torch had been added to create confusion. This alteration occurred before the stolen canvas, by an unknown artist, was mistakenly attributed to the painter Manetti. Following the opening of an investigation announced on Tuesday, January 9, carabinieri from the heritage protection unit searched Sgarbi's three homes and sequestered the painting, along with documents and computer equipment.
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