CULTURE

Vasari Archive at the Center of a 150M Euro Dispute

By Peter Spinella

The St. Petersburg Times

Paul Miller / The St. Petersburg Times Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574)

Mystery surrounds the future of a 16th-century Italian painter’s archive after it was bought by a Russian engineering company for 150 million euros ($225 million), even though the archive cannot legally be taken out of Italy.

The archive, a collection of sketches, paintings, as well as letters by Michelangelo and a series of 16th-century popes, once belonged to Giorgio Vasari, an Italian painter, architect and writer from the Renaissance period.

The archive was purchased by Russian company ROSS Engineering, causing an outcry in Italy over the sale of the archive that many consider a national treasure.

“We are quite surprised by the fact that Russians are so interested in an archive so linked to Tuscan and Italian history,” Diana Toccafondi, Archival Superintendent of Tuscany, said in an e-mail interview late last year.

Vasari was famous in his lifetime for his paintings and architecture, but today he is best known for his book about the lives of the artists of his day, including Botticelli, Raphael and Leonardo Da Vinci, which is considered one of the first books on art history.

Vasari’s archive had disappeared from view for more than three centuries before appearing at the start of the 20th century in the ownership of a Count Spinelli, the descendant of the executor of Vasari’s will. The archive was housed at Vasari’s ancestral home in Arezzo, 80 kilometers southeast of Florence, but still belonged to the descendents of Spinelli, the Festari family.

It was the Festari family that sold the archive to ROSS Engineering last autumn. When news of the deal broke, it was greeted suspiciously by the Italian media.

Local authorities in Arezzo attacked the deal and called for the archive to be protected.

Newspapers questioned why so much money was paid for the archive when, even if sold, it must remain within the Vasari estate, according to an Italian legal decision.

The outcry prompted one government body to step in.

Wikipedia commons Giorgio Vasari’s historic book about artists’ lives and works.

The archive’s owners, Tammaso, Antonio, Francesco and Leonardo Festari were selling the archive to cover tax debt accrued by their father Giovanni, so the Italian tax collection agency, Equitalia, citing the back taxes, was able to seize the archive and place it under care of the Superintendent for Arts and Historical Heritage of the province of Arezzo, which had previously overseen care of the works.

“Giorgio Vasari was Arezzo’s most important artist during the Renaissance. It is quite natural that Arezzo’s local government is very interested in keeping the archive in the town,” Toccafondi said.

The seizure is only a temporary measure, as the heirs have the opportunity to get the rights for the archive back as soon as the debt is paid.

Nothing has changed in the archive’s situation since the New Year, Toccafondi said in a telephone interview.

Vasily Stepanov, CEO of ROSS Engineering, said at a news conference in Moscow in November that the company was buying the archive because it is a “good investment.”

A lawyer for ROSS Engineering, Alberto Marchetti said the price tag could be recouped over five years by exhibiting the works.

However, experts have questioned the high price paid.

“There is more to understand about what’s behind this, because the price offered is way beyond its real value, by at least eight to 10 times,” former Culture Minister Walter Veltroni told Italian reporters after his visit to Casa Vasari, the museum housing the collection, late last year.

ROSS Engineering refused to disclose the company’s plans for the archive and whether or not the works would be publicly displayed.

Muddying the waters even further was an Italian media report that quoted Stepanov as saying he was buying the archive for an oligarch friend of his for whom 150 million euros was only a minor sum. But then later he said the transfer to the oligarch was cancelled after the man was killed in a car crash Sept. 9, Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported him as saying. But the paper could not find any report of a death of an oligarch on that date.

Stepanov did not mention an oligarch at the news conference, and ROSS Engineering could not answer any questions about the matter this week.

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