Discovered 24.000 works: Titian, van Dyck, Tvboy and Giuseppe Veneziano among others
The prismatic eye of the medias, in the morbid curiosity that has passed through newspapers and TV, books and magazines related to the memory of Berlusconi, has not failed to recall the relationship of the Knight with art. This was done repeatedly by the Undersecretary of Culture, Vittorio Sgarbi, his friend for years, who between revelations and simple scoops, recalled this simple passion of the Premier, definitely not cultivated, which has translated, however, in an immense picture of about 24 thousand works.
No one has been able to be an active part in these choices. Only a few antique dealers friends, mostly from Rome. As always, Berlusconi acted according to personal impulses, far from the logic of the market, a result only of a personal interpretation of beauty. His Pinacoteca, like everything that has moved around him in the last forty years, is therefore the result of emotional, individual, instinctive choices that have simply given him the pleasure of art, without any different reason. He was proud of the Mausoleum realized in the villa of Arcore by Pietro Cascella. There are still some old photos on the web that portray the Knight next to the sculptor with a bucket of concrete.
It was the place for his remains. So it was after his cremation, as for his parents, as for his sister. All in that family chapel watched over by an intense Giudizio of Procaccini. And everywhere, in his villas around the world, his purchases, often bought a little randomly. The revelations of Alessandro Orlando are now known: the historical seller of atworks on tv. From him, as the news tell, Berlusconi bought more than 2500 paintings (sacred subjects, female nudes, Russian artists) for a total of about 3 million euros. A nocturnal passion for teleshopping never revealed. It started recently, in 2018, with a Madonna con bambino by an artist from van Dyck’s workshop beaten off the competition for 62 thousand euros. And then the Picture Gallery of Villa San Martino in Arcore, a wing of his museum-style residence. Among others, the Ritratto di Ippolito dei Medici by Tiziano, dated 1533, from the Museum of Cleveland, with a value of about 5 million euros, as well as several artworks by Isidora Duncan, Annigoni, Plinio Nomellini. Berlusconi is passionate about art, instinctively linked to his choices, the modern Berlusconi is a reference in the artworks of many contemporary international artists such as Jota Castro, Tvboy, Sirante, Stefano Pierotti, Giuseppe Veneziano and many others. A life like a work of art. His aspiration collected ironically by many creators of art. Not the portrait of an icon, according to the coordinates expressed by Warhol, but a myth to be broken, as well as many journalists, many political opponents, maybe the Italian society. The Knight leaves us like this. With the seal of an immoderate passion for art that, according to Sgarbi, is comparable only to that for women. Always ready to capture the stigmata of beauty.
