«Can a fragment of a painting be bought for 350,000 euros when the author’s works have an average price of 100,000?». is the question asked by Undersecretary for Culture, Vittorio Sgarbicalling into question the Royal Museums of Turin and the Technical-Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Culture which operated in September 2022, therefore before the establishment of the new Government, to the acquisition of the canvas that recomposes the figurative structure of the painting La Musica by Antiveduto Gramatica.
The fragment
«The modest fragment – reconstructs Sgarbi – it was purchased, from what is known, by an English antique dealer, Derek Johns, after being exhibited at Tefaf in Maastricht at the “Carretto & Occhionegro Gallery” with a request for 1 million euros, which fell to 350 thousand euros. Since it is a fragment, albeit connected to a work present in the Royal Museums of Turin, the fair market value of an Italian painting supposedly coming from the Torlonia collection, and exported indefinitely, cannot be exceed 100 thousand euros (see the intact “David triumphant with the head of Goliath”, which appeared at Sotheby’s on 4 July 2019 and sold for 89 thousand euros; the “Mary Magdalene and the two angels” sold by Hampel on 3 December of 2020 for 49,700 thousand euros; the “Sibilla Tiburtina” which appeared at Pandolfini in October 2022 for 12 thousand euros; the “Salomè” which appeared at Sotheby’s on 8 December 2016 for 70,458 euros).
The announcement
On 28 February, the Royal Museums of Turin announced that Gramatica’s Concerto a due figure (1569-1626) had become part of its collection and that the canvas, combined with the theorbo player, recomposes the figurative system of the painting The Musica, recorded in 1627 in the inventory of the Roman collection of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, a great collector of Caravaggio and Gramatica. From 28 February to 5 March 2023, the two masterpieces reunited after four centuries are on display on the first floor of the Galleria Sabaudain one of the rooms dedicated to the Caravaggio masters and recently rearranged.
The two canvases will be presented to the public again, after in-depth diagnostic investigations, at the exhibition «The Music of Antiveduto Gramatica and the Falletti di Barolo collection», scheduled from 9 June to 1 October on the second floor of the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.