Rubens seized, investigation by the Pisa Superintendence office – Primocanale.it
GENOA – The investigation by the Genoa prosecutor’s office that led to the seizure of the ‘risen Christ appears to the Mother’ is expanding, attributed to the Flemish painter Rubens and exhibited until three days ago in Palazzo Ducale. The export office of the superintendency of Pisa, the body that issued the certification for the export of the painting, ended up in the crosshairs of the investigators of the cultural heritage protection unit.
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The office was closed by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage in 2019 because there may have been irregularities in issuing other certifications for other works. Let us briefly reconstruct what is the content of the investigations: the painting, exhibited in a dossier room at Palazzo Ducale at the end of the visit itinerary of the exhibition dedicated to the Flemish artist and his relationship with the city of Genoa, was seized by the Carabinieri of the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit. The work was owned by the noble Cambiaso family of Genoa who kept it in Palazzo Centurione Cambiaso, a residence included in the Rolli circuit (historic buildings declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco), who had tried to sell it, knowing the real attribution, without succeeding, according to what was reconstructed by the military. They were then able to sell it, in 2012, to the two suspects for 350,000 euros.
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The two merchants had it restored in 2014, bringing out the second figure of a woman and they had brought out the painting falsely declaring, to the export office of the Superintendency of Pisa, which was by an anonymous Flemish author and which was worth 25,000 euros. After a series of transfers to foreign companies, created by an accountant and his son and also under investigation, the painting was loaned for the exhibition, according to the investigators, “also to certify its authorship by Rubens and increase its value”.