by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Oct 9, 2020 |
Photo session for Maenad statue at via della Lungara in Rome, ©FondazioneTorlonia, Ph. Lorenzo de Masi.
Not only do objects have provenances, but so do collections. One of the world’s finest privately held collections will be shared with the public starting later this month. The collection is housed in Rome, and while it is difficult to travel during this time, we are pleased to share a blog post about the upcoming exhibition in Italy. The following blog post was written by colleagues in Italy at Milestone Rome. Founded by two Roman locals, Milestone Rome is an independent cultural project aimed at spreading appreciation for the Eternal City and disseminating knowledge about its rich cultural heritage through art historical information enhanced by digital technologies. The group promotes academic-quality cultural content, and its website and app are also wonderful resources for travelers who visit Rome. Amineddoleh & Associates is pleased to share Milestone Rome’s post with our readers. Read more about the group on its great website.
The Storied Torlonia Collection of Ancient Marbles is Finally on View in Rome
Group of restored statue at via della Lungara in Rome, ©FondazioneTorlonia, Ph. Lorenzo de Masi.
Almost 100 exquisite marble sculptures belonging to the renowned Torlonia Collection will be shown to the public on the occasion of the long-awaited exhibition I marmi Torlonia: Collezionare capolavori (“The Torlonia Marbles: Collecting Masterpieces”). After a turbulent year of delayed cultural events, the highly anticipated exhibition will be on view at the Capitoline Museums in Rome from October 14, 2020 until June 29, 2021. This will be its first stop on an unprecedented world tour. The exhibition is curated by two archaeologists and academics from the Accademia dei Lincei, famed Italian art historian Salvatore Settis (who was entrusted with the scientific project) together with art historian and professor Carlo Gasparri. The event is made possible thanks to a historic agreement between the public Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism and the private Fondazione Torlonia.
The successful negotiation, reached in 2016, comes after many years of a complex disputes between the noble Torlonia family and the Italian State. For this reason, the collection was hidden to the public for over 40 years. As a result, the exhibition in Rome will surely be one of the most important art events of the year or even of the decade.
The Troubled History of the Torlonia Collection
The Torlonia Family is a noble family from Rome that acquired a massive fortune in the 18th and 19th centuries overseeing finances for the Vatican. With its wealth, the family became major collectors of art. In fact, the complete Torlonia Collection is much larger than the selection of 96 pieces to be displayed as part of the exhibition. The collection includes 620 artworks that were catalogued in 1881 by Pietro Ercole Visconti as the result of a long series of acquisitions and excavations. The collection grew as the family purchased entire art collections that belonged to princely families in decline, such as the Giustiniani Collection. The Torlonia Collection was housed in a number of residences owned by the noble family, adding to the family’s prestige and title.
Giuseppe Primoli, A visit to the Torlonia Museum, 1898 ca., image via Wikimedia Commons.
The history of the Torlonia Collection took a turn at the beginning of the 19th century. At the time, it began assuming the form of a museum collection thanks to the Prince Alessandro Torlonia. In 1866, the prince acquired the villa of distinguished Cardinal Alessandro Albani. The villa is in Rome, located along the Via Salaria. When the prince acquired the villa, he also purchased the impressive collections of paintings and Greek and Roman sculptures found within. By the end of the 19th century, the collection included an extraordinary number of ancient marbles. Around 1875, the Prince Alessandro promoted a project to establish a Museum of Ancient Sculpture in an old grain warehouse along Via della Lungara near Palazzo Corsini. Dubbed “Torlonia Museum” it was open to small groups of visitors. But the project didn’t last, since in 1976 the building was converted into housing units and the collection locked up. The 2020 exhibition will display artworks that have not been on view since the 1970s.
Nowadays, the celebrated Torlonia Collection is not publicly visible, but it is the “most important private collection of ancient sculpture existing in the world,” according to the well-known art historian and critic Federico Zeri. What’s more, it is significant for many fields of study, including art history, archaeology, collecting history, restoration and museology. Due to the high-quality and complex nature of several collection which joined it, the Torlonia Collection has been then called “the collection of all collections.”
The Value of the Extraordinary Exhibition
Porto relief, Torlonia Collection, ©FondazioneTorlonia, Ph. Lorenzo De Masi.
The anticipation surrounding this exhibition derives from many things. The art historical value of the sculptures themselves is incredible. The items include busts, reliefs, statues, sarcophagi, decorative elements and rare archaeological findings which have been always deemed as outstanding examples of ancient art. Also, the collection itself has an interesting history, as it was acquired over the centuries from a number of notable Romans. Moreover, the collection offers the opportunity to understand the prestigious and long history of antiquities collecting in Rome over a span of four centuries, between the 15th and the 19th century.
This is highlighted by the curators’ decision to configure the final room of the exhibition next to the Exedra of Marcus Aurelius, featuring the Lateran Ancient bronzes which were donated in 1471 by Pope Sisto IV’s to the “Roman People” and constituted the nucleus of what is considered as the first public museum in the world. In this way, the relationship between private collecting and public ownership are visually explained, highlighting the influential role of Rome in the art world.
A Torlonia Museum in Rome?
Statue of a goat at rest, Torlonia Collection ©FondazioneTorlonia, Ph. Lorenzo de Masi.
After being displayed at the newly restored exhibition venue at the Capitoline Museums in Rome, the traveling exhibit will tour around the world at a number of prestigious museums. As the details about these international agreements are revealed, the event schedule will be disclosed. It is also expected that the exhibition will end with the revelation of a permanent home in Rome, to be chosen by the Municipality of the City together with the Torlonia Family. This final home will permanently house the collection. This coveted collection will be yet another jewel in the crown of Rome’s artistic and cultural crown.
Hestia Giustiniani, Torlonia Collection, ©FondazioneTorlonia, Ph. Lorenzo De Masi.
Old man from Otricoli, Torlonia Collection, ©FondazioneTorlonia, Ph. Lorenzo De Masi.
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Aug 31, 2020 |
Lawrence Keating
We are pleased to have had a stellar summer associate join us at Amineddoleh & Associates this year. Lawrence Keating is a rising 3L in the evening division at Fordham University School of Law. He is the President of the Fordham Art Law Society and a member of the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal. Recently, Lawrence participated in the Federal Litigation Clinic and the Democracy & the Constitution Clinic at Fordham. He has also served as an Editorial Fellow for the Fordham Center on Law and Information Policy and as a judicial intern with the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Last summer, he participated in Fordham’s Belfast-Dublin Summer Program and interned with the Intellectual Property Division of the Irish national government.
Prior to law school, Lawrence received a B.B.A. in Finance from the College of William & Mary and a minor in Art History. During his time there, he interned at the Muscarelle Museum of Art under the direction of Curator Dr. John T. Spike. After graduation, Lawrence worked at Christie’s Auction House, most recently in its Office of Client Accounting, which oversees client-facing financial and compliance functions. His hobbies include trivia, running, and yoga (all, of course, from a safe distance).
During Lawrence’s time at Amineddoleh & Associates, he was an integral part of our team. He impressed us with his legal research and drafting skills, and he was a pleasure to work with. We were pleased to have Lawrence join our team, and we wish him another wonderful year at Fordham.
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Aug 28, 2020 |
First restoration attempt
Earlier this summer, familiar news came from Spain. Yet another amateur restorer tried his hand at conservation work, with predictably disastrous results. In this case, however, the painting was disfigured not only once – but twice. A private collector in Valencia entrusted a copy of The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo to a furniture restorer for cleaning. 1,200 euros later, this was the result:
Second restoration attempt
Naturally, the collector was stunned – this led the restorer to attempt to fix the problem, which only made the situation worse:
The collector finally sought a professional art restorer to correct the damage, with both his finances and the painting worse for wear.
Despite patrimony laws protecting cultural property at both the local and national levels, art restoration is an unregulated field in Spain. María Borja, the coordinator of Valencia’s branch of the Professional Association of Conservators Restorers of Spain (Asociación Profesional de Conservadores Restauradores de España, ACRE), indicates that as a result, botched restorations are common and may cause “irreversible damage” to artworks. This legislative blind spot has made Spanish heritage vulnerable to third party intervention.
“Beastly” museum
© Leila Amineddoleh
Museum in Borja © Leila Amineddoleh
The Immaculate Conception is the latest in a series of Spanish “restoration fails” that rose to prominence in 2012 with the so-called “Beast Jesus.” Cecilia Giménez, an elderly widow and “amateur painter,” attempted to restore a fresco of Jesus crowned with thorns (Ecce Homo) located at her local church in Borja, Zaragoza. Her efforts fell far short of the mark and went viral, spawning thousands of memes and parodies over media outlets. It even served as the focus of tourism, drawing 150,000 tourists from all over the world to see the “terrible work of art” in person. There is now even a museum devoted to “Beast Jesus” in Borja. Nonetheless, the fresco will remain beastly since restorers are unable to undo Ms. Giménez’s work.
Site of the St. George “restoration”
© Leila Amineddoleh
More recently, in 2018 the church of San Miguel de Estella in Navarre hired an art teacher to restore a sculpture of Saint George. The result was “something out of a Disney cartoon” with “a pink face, beady eyes, and a garish red and gray suit of armor.” In the words of the municipal mayor, “the restoration leaves much to be desired.” Qualified restorers then worked for over 300 hours to remove the new material from the sculpture and restore it to its original dignity. Both the church and amateur restorer were fined 6,000 euros and the restoration cost nearly 36,000 euros in total. Although the end result is much more pleasing to the eye, some of the original polychrome was lost due to the use of improper paint during the prior intervention.
That same year, another “sacrilegious restoration” took place in the village of Rañadorio, Asturias. A local tobacco shop owner, María Luisa Menéndez, gave a 15th-century trio of wooden sculptures a “neon makeover,” including eyeliner and lipstick. Ms. Menéndez defended her colorful interpretation as a necessity but the regional minister for culture termed it “more a vengeance than a restoration” since the sculptures had been restored 15 years earlier and were never painted in the first place. Many on Twitter, including ACRE, started using the hashtag #SOSPatrimonio (#SOSPatrimony) to call attention to this ongoing trend and demand governmental intervention before more misguided amateurs decide to provide assistance.
These cases show that collectors must be wary of entrusting their valuable property to inexperienced workers in order to save money. Not only will this be costlier in the long run, but the damage to an artwork may be permanent, resulting in a loss of resale and aesthetic value. It is doubtful that a serious collector would want to purchase “Beast Jesus” and install it in their home, except for the sake of novelty. However, novelty does not last forever. The historical importance of heritage is also a consideration – amateur restorations can strip artworks and objects of their historical context and important details may be lost forever. This is a blow both to private collectors and the public at large. At Amineddoleh & Associates, we strive to assist collectors in making the best decisions for their collections and safeguard artworks for future generations.
The phenomenon of abandoned towns and Spain’s financial crisis have heightened the need for more robust ethical and professional standards in the field of heritage restoration and protection. Bungled restorations are just the tip of the iceberg; aggressive cleaning of historical building façades, using protected sites as parking spaces, and theft from local churches all threaten cultural objects in Spain.
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Aug 23, 2020 |
Last week, Amineddoleh & Associates LLC filed its second Motion to Dismiss in the case of Safani Gallery, Inc. v. The Italian Republic, Civil No. 19-10507 (SDNY), responding to Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint. Here, Plaintiff – an antiquities gallery –seeks redress from Italy for the seizure of a marble antiquity depicting a male bust. The seizure was made by the Manhattan District Attorney, not the Mediterranean republic. The object first gained public attention in 2018 when it was reported by the NY Times that the Manhattan DA seized the object described by the plaintiff art gallery as the “Head of Alexander.” This is a misnomer, as the marble likely depicts a Parthian “barbarian.” A filing by the DA in NY State Supreme Court describes the head as one that decorated the Basilica Emilia, a civil basilica in the heart of the Roman Forum. For information about the Basilica Emilia, the American Institute for Roman Culture’s onsite video offers a glimpse of the important historic site. (Ironically, one of the functions of the Basilica Emilia was as a law court.)
Ruins of Basilica Emilia Photo credit: @Roma_Wonder
Notably, this case bears certain similarities to the Barnet litigation, where our firm represented the Greek Ministry of Culture and recently secured a favorable decision in the Second Circuit. As in Barnet, here a foreign sovereign made a communication concerning an antiquity originating from within its borders. However, in Safani, a tip was made to U.S. law enforcement (the Manhattan DA) rather than to a private party. While the original Complaint focused on jurisdiction under the commercial activity exception of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA), the Amended Complaint altered its allegations to include the FSIA’s tort exception, expropriation exception and obligations under several international legal instruments. We are confident that the court will correctly interpret the FSIA’s exceptions. We are proud to represent Italy in this matter, particularly as the nation’s record for protecting cultural heritage has gained it international praise. As the nation with the most number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites (Italy boasts 55), our client actively protects its heritage for current and future generations.
Amineddoleh & Associates is proud to continue representing clients in high-profile antiquities cases which affect the international protection of heritage.
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Jul 20, 2020 |
For decades, art institutions have struggled to find a compelling response to concerns raised over owning and possessing art and antiquities taken and exported during periods of colonialism. Critics argue that it is unethical to continue holding works that were sourced during times of conflict or subjugation, and often taken as trophies of war or as symbols of power over foreign subjects. By doing so, it deprives the original owners of their rights. Critics also argue that displaying these objects in a foreign museum strips them of essential cultural context. While the debate over such works is nothing new (nations such as Greece, Egypt, India and China have been seeking repatriation of objects for decades), recent protests against racial injustice across the globe have brought the conversation out of museum boardrooms and into the spotlight.
One of the Benin Bronzes at the British Museum. Copyright: British Museum
As museums across Europe begin to reopen, Dan Hicks, a professor and senior curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, has begun the arduous tasking of evaluating the museum’s collection of more than 600,000 works representing almost every country across the globe. Hicks acknowledges that displaying works of cultural significance without proper context risks telling a revisionist version of history. The professor has received acclaim for his efforts to re-introduce the museum’s collection to the public from the perspective of the works’ countries of origin. “This is very specifically about a period of time when our anthropology museums were used for purposes of institutional racism, race science, the display of white supremacy. At this moment in history, it could not be more urgent to remove such icons from our institutions.” Hicks also believes in deaccessioning and returning works that were illicitly seized, including notable objects such as the Benin Bronzes. The bronzes, which are found in many prominent museums around the world, were seized by British soldiers during a punitive raid on the Kingdom of Benin in 1897 (modern day Nigeria). To Hicks, the decision is simple: “It is a matter of respect and being treated equally. If you steal people’s heritage, you’re stealing their psychology, and you need to return it.” It remains to be seen whether museums will adopt this approach as the public continues applying pressure on museums to reconcile with a troubling past.
The large carved relief showing a Maya king’s headdress with an owl motif is among works to be sold at auction in Paris. Copyright: Millon and Assoc.
It is important to note that this problem is not exclusive to European countries with an imperialistic past; culturally significant works are still being looted and sold on the open market today. In particular, works from Africa and South America are becoming increasingly popular among art collectors, bringing stolen or looted works to the surface of the market. Amineddoleh & Associates LLC recently discussed two such works which were sold at auction in Paris despite claims that they were looted in violation of local law. In contrast, another French auction house recently pulled a Mayan sculpture from its sale after allegations that the piece was clearly stolen spurred public outcry. Archeologists had previously documented the piece at the ancient city of Piedras Negras, in modern day Guatemala, placing its export during the 1960s and virtually eliminating the possibility that it was exported legally. The Guatemalan Embassy in Paris released a statement once it was agreed the work would be withdrawn stating that negotiations with the sellers were underway. The close proximity of these two sales with different outcomes demonstrates that countries have not yet determined a reliable means of repatriating looted artwork. The significance of this issue was underscored recently as an Interpol sting led to the seizure of approximately 19,000 stolen artifacts, including pre-Columbian relics, suggesting the illicit market for such goods is thriving. In fact, just last year a French auction house sold dozens of Mexican artifacts, despite Mexico’s demand for their return. Hopefully, countries will find it easier to have culturally significant works returned as the public becomes more aware of the issue and ask institutions to be held accountable.
Collectors must also be aware that purchases of cultural artifacts may be legal at the time of sale, but subject to scrutiny and criticism later on. It is imperative to consult knowledgeable professionals before adding potentially questionable items to a collection, whether public or private. Amineddoleh & Associates prides itself on its knowledge of the art and cultural heritage market, and we assist collectors and purchasers in carrying out responsible transactions.
