The family behind the Fiat empire is the subject of a new investigation centered around missing artworks and forgeries, according to the Times of London.
The Agnelli family was already the subject of a similar inquiry in 2023. That year, the Italian broadcaster Rai revealed that investigators had discovered that works from the collection were illegally sold abroad or relocated.
The collection was first formed by Giovanni Agnelli, who founded Fiat in 1899, and was continued by his grandson, Gianni, who appeared on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list during the 1990s and died in 2003. The Rai documentary reported that the collection numbered 636 works and was thought to be worth $1 billion in 2023.
The Times report published this weekend suggests that the intrigue surrounding the collection has deepened. According to the Times, the investigation stems from a continued dispute surrounding the inheritance of Gianni and his wife Marella, who died in 2019.
Per the Times, Italian investigators are specifically looking into 13 works, among them pieces by John Singer Sargent, Pablo Picasso, and Francis Bacon. Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen, the daughter of Gianni and Marella, alleges that these works are missing and that she is being “cheated her out of her share of the fortune” by Marella’s three children from her first marriage, according to the Times.
Carabinieri, or police officers in Italy, are reportedly seeking information about the whereabouts of those 13 works, which a staffer at the Agnellis’ Rome residence alleged were replaced with other pieces. Shippers reportedly brought copies of the works to Rome between 2016 and 2018.
ARTnews has reached out to the Pinacoteca Agnelli, the private museum in Turin that shows works from Gianni and Marella’s collection, for comment.
While it is unclear what effect the new report of the investigation will have, the 2023 Rai documentary rankled some Italian politicians. According to the Art Newspaper, after the documentary aired, Vittorio Sgarbi, undersecretary to Italy’s culture minister, said at the time that art collectors should be able to do “what they want” with the works they own. “We are in a Stalinist state,” he said.
