Wikipedia

Alana collection

The Alana collection is a private collection of paintings, owned by the Chilean economist Álvaro Saieh and his wife Ana Guzmán and kept at their residence in Newark, Delaware. The couple have been collecting since the late 1990s, starting with Italian 'primitives' and Renaissance paintings and later broadening to Baroque art.[3] The collection is described in three volumes:

  • The Alana collection: Italian paintings from the 13th to 15th century (2009)[4]
  • Italian paintings and sculptures from the fourteenth to sixteenth century (2011)[5]
  • Italian paintings from the 14th to 16th century (2014).[6]
Pontormo, The Lute Player (c. 1529–1530), oil on panel, Alana collection, 2017.[1]

"A painting by a minor master close to The Lute Player by Pontormo or the Madonna by Fra Angelico, which I rank among the greatest masterpieces in my collection." — Álvaro Saieh.[2]

Works in the collection

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From 13 September 2019 to 20 January 2020[7]., 75 pieces from the collection were loaned to the musée Jacquemart-André in Paris[8] This was the first (and according to Carlo Falciani possibly the last[9][10]) time they had been displayed outside their owners' residence

Other than El Greco's The Entombment (exhibited at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2019-2020[11][12]), the following works formed part of the Musée Jacquemart-André exhibition:[13]


Cimabue's Mocking of Christ

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According to Carole Blumenfeld in la Gazette de l'Hôtel Drouot, the couple were also the purchasers of Cimabue's Mocking of Christ via the Italian art dealer Fabrizio Moretti, sold for 24.18 million Euros by an auction house in Senlis, Oise on 27 October 2019.[14] Álvaro Saieh had effectively resigned from the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art just before the sale in order to bid freely on the work.[15] The work was classified a national treasure on 23 December 2019 by France's Ministry of Culture,[16] banning its export from French territory for 30 months to allow the Louvre time to raise enough money to acquire it.[17] If it had not done so, an export license would have been granted to the work and it would have joined the Alana collection.[18]

Doubts on authenticity of Saint Cosmas

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At the end of the musée Jacquemart-André exhibition, France's Office central de lutte contre le trafic des biens culturels seized Saint Cosmas by Bronzino on a ruling by judge Aude Buresi[19] on instruction in the affair in fake historic paintings that had been flooding the international art market for several years.[20] It was thought that the painting could have been a painting put into circulation by Giuliano Ruffini against whom a European arrest warrant was issued in May 2019. Another was taken out against his son Mathieu and the painter Lino Frongia was arrested in September 2019.[21]

The work entered the Alana collection in 2011, it was first exhibited in 2010 in a Bronzino retrospective at Florence's Palazzo Strozzi organised by Carlo Falciani and Philippe Costamagna, the latter being a Florentine art specialist and curator at the Fesch Museum in Ajaccio. Under questioning, Costamagna stated that he had been shown the painting in Giuliano Ruffini's apartment on rue Saint-Honoré and confirmed its attribution to Bronzino due to several pentimenti[19] before it was exhibited in Florence and published twice with Carlo Falciani.[22] The curator also clarified that the painting seemed to belong to Spanish art dealers, who were also present when Costamagna viewed the work at Ruffini's. Ruffini was confirmed as the discoverer of the long-lost work and yet his name did not appear in the catalogue of the musée Jacquemart-André exhibition[19] - the provenance only mentioned Juan Lamella in London and H. Wirth in Zurich in 2009 before its acquisition by the Alana collection in 2011.[22] Representatives of the Alana collection later clarified that the work had been purchased in 2011 from the Derek Johns Gallery in London.[19]

After interviewing Vincent Noce of The Art Newspaper, Didier Rykner of La Tribune de l'art stated "I never claimed that the work was a fake. To advance such a point of view would be very dangerous even before any historigraphic or scientific examination. I had neither the expertise nor even the right, if I thought so, which was not the case, to advance such an opinion. I do know that it was presented at Ruffini's home. And that story does not hold. I leave it there for the moment and I do not believe that my paper would suggest otherwise.[23]".

Rykner added that Costamagna had met the painting's Spanish owners at Ruffini's apartment and that it had been anonymous until Ruffini identified it as a lost part of Bronzino's Deposition (musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie de Besançon). He added that "the only argument - that this painting had been seen at Ruffini's home - is not sufficient to prove it was a fake. Fakes of this provenance are always based on drawn compositions, but this composition was absolutely unknown. It is impossible that a forger could have invented this hand position, which is a pure creation of Bronzino's. The painting, which has several re-paintings, and visible pentimenti and an underdrawing. It was restored for the exhibition in Florence by the same restorer, Rita Alzeni, as the Bronzino works. I immediately recognised Bronzino's hand, a forger could not invent this".[23]

Rykner also questioned "the legitimacy of a seizure in France of a painting acquired overseas, by a foreigner collector, and which does not seem to affect the French art market". He argued that the risk of facing similar treatment could discourage foreign private collectors loaning their works to French museums.[23]

References

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  1. ^ Falciani & Curie 2019, pp. 164–165.
  2. ^ Falciani & Curie 2019, pp. 19–20.
  3. ^ Étienne Dumont. "Peinture italienne. Le Musée Jacquemart-André de Paris expose la Collection Alana". Bilan.
  4. ^ Boskovits 2009.
  5. ^ Boskovits 2011.
  6. ^ Chiodo & Padovani 2014.
  7. ^ Philipe Lançon (14 October 2019). "La Renaissance italienne, divin credo de la Collection Alana" (in French). Libération.
  8. ^ "La collection Alana" (in French). musee-jacquemart-andre.com.
  9. ^ Carlo Falciani video 2019, 11 min 10 sec.
  10. ^ Àlvaro Saieh having told Carlo Falciani his sadness at seeing the house "emptied", the curator clarified that it would be necessary to be privately invited to the collector's house to see these works again.
  11. ^ "Greco". grandpalais.fr.
  12. ^ "Parcours en image de l'exposition Greco". spectacles-selection.com.
  13. ^ Falciani & Curie 2019.
  14. ^ Carole Blumenfeld (30 October 2019). "Un Christ moqué… et très envié" (in French). La Gazette de l'Hôtel Drouot..
  15. ^ Didier Rykner (30 November 2019). "Le panneau du Maître de Vyšší Brod acquis par le Metropolitan Museum" (in French). La Tribune de l'art.
  16. ^ "Communiqués de presse. Un panneau peint par Cimabue vers 1280, représentant La Dérision du Christ, reconnu trésor national" (in French). culture.gouv.fr.
  17. ^ Didier Rykner (23 December 2019). "Le Cimabue classé trésor national" (in French). La Tribune de l'art.
  18. ^ Anne-Sophie Lesage-Münch (2 November 2019). "Le Christ moqué de Cimabue devient le tableau primitif le plus cher du monde" (in French). Connaissance des arts..
  19. ^ a b c d Vincent Noce (21 January 2020). Alleged Bronzino seized from the Alana Collection in connection with ongoing Old Master scandal. The Art Newspaper.
  20. ^ Marc Endeweld (19 May 2018). "" Penser qu'un peintre est un génie inimitable, c'est de l'ordre de l'idéologie "" (in French). Marianne.
  21. ^ Agathe Hakoun (18 September 2019). "Faux tableaux : le présumé faussaire de l'affaire Ruffini arrêté" (in French). Connaissance des arts.
  22. ^ a b Falciani & Curie 2019, p. 166.
  23. ^ a b c Didier Rykner (21 January 2020). "Un Bronzino de la collection Alana saisi par les douanes" (in French). The Art Tribune.

Bibliography

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