Sgarbi: “Investigated for painting de Boulogne? It wasn’t a copy of mine, they attack me for candidacy”

“First of all, the painting is not authentic, and then it is not mine, I have absolutely nothing to do with it. I only had it in sight, and I had established that it was clearly a copy. It is not a de Boulogne, it is not published by anyone. part. This is another of these things done against me due to my candidacy in Rome as councilor “. This is how Adnkronos Vittorio Sgarbi responds to the accusation, reported today in the newspaper ‘Repubblica’, for which it is being investigated in Syracuse, or for the illicit export of a canvas attributed to the master Valentin de Boulogne, whose commercial value is estimated in five million euros. The painting was found in an apartment in the Principality of Monaco, and was brought back to Italy on June 15 and seized. “It was an appraisal that I was doing of a painting that was ordered to take it I don’t know where, but it is an absolute copy: it is not that of the Zeri photo library, the original is at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena”, urges the critic of ‘ art. “They took it from my house because it was brought for me to do an appraisal, so this is an absurd accusation.” “I was trying to verify the possibility that the painting would pass from the status of a copy to the status of a replica, but the derivation from the other versions was evident,” continues Sgarbi. “I emphasize that I was totally ignorant of the destination of the work once my evaluation was done”, Sgarbi points out. “I knew I had to go to an antiques exhibition, but then I didn’t know anything else”, concludes the art critic.