Italy

Two unusual works by Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto (1697-1786), will be on display in a Mayfair Gallery this week prior to their sale at auction later in the month in Genoa, Italy.

Forum Auctions has formalised its deal with book dealer Filippo Rotundo’s Phiobiblon Gallery and will hold Forum branded auctions in Italy later this month.

Two large Old Master paintings worth up to €180,000 (£123,530) have been returned to Italy 22 years after they were stolen.

Stakeholders in the Italian art market will meet lawmakers this week in the hope of overturning legislation they say has hampered the country’s art market for a century.

Florence’s longstanding Antiques Fair, the ‘Biennale Internationale dell’ Antiquariato di Firenze’, opens next week in the city’s 17th century Palazzo Corsini, running from September 26 to October 4.

Dreweatts & Bloomsbury auctions have joined forces with Philobiblon, a leading Italian antiquarian books and manuscripts specialist, to offer monthly valuation events, auctions and fine art exhibitions in Rome.

The franchise agreement under which Bloomsbury Auctions Italia has operated in Rome since September 2011 has ceased.

SPIRALLING debts and a lack of prospects have forced the closure of Finarte Casa d’Aste S.p.A., formerly a major player in the Italian auctions scene.

A COLLECTION of 85 bosuns’ calls was among items stolen from a home in Milan in early August. Most of the calls were British, but there were also examples from the USA, Italy, China and India.

GIORGIO Corbelli, president of Italian auction house Finarte, has been given a 20-month jail sentence on charges related to financial dishonesty.

A VERY Italian tale involving an important collection of papers that once belonged to the ‘father of art history’, Giorgio Vasari, took a new twist last month when a court injunction halted its sale by auction at the eleventh hour.

ITALIAN auctioneers Finarte have announced that they will no longer make their auction results public because of complaints from both consignors and buyers.

There is nothing quite like dying young for genius to acquire immortality. An object lesson in this came with the predictably frantic bidding from the four corners of the world at the sale of some effects once belonging to Maria Callas. The total of €1.3m (£900,000) trebled expectations.

LONDON-based specialist book auctioneers Bloomsbury Auctions enjoyed a successful inaugural sale in Rome on December 6 where a total of €801,000 (£545,000) was realised.

CHRISTIE’S are to centralise all Italian sales in Milan and will concentrate on Contemporary and Modern art, Old Masters and jewellery.

CAPITALISING on the recent closure of Christie’s book department in Rome, Bloomsbury Auctions have opened a new saleroom in the Eternal City. It represents the first overseas venture for the Maddox Street book specialists who in recent years have expanded their interests into art, prints, collectables, coins and medals.

A COURT ruling means new Venice auction house San Marco can proceed with their July 8-9 sale - but only under strict conditions.

Italy has witnessed a sudden, perhaps unexpected, surge in its auction scene with a series of record-breaking sales at Sotheby’s, the most remarkable of which has been the Milan sale of a cycle of Tiepolo canvases on May 30.

François Pinault, the French business tycoon who owns Christie’s, has abandoned his plans to build a £100m museum near Paris to house his Contemporary art collection.

A new auction high for the Neapolitan Impressionist Vincenzo Irolli (1860-1949) was established by Sotheby’s (20-15.42% buyer’s premium, excluding VAT) last month in Milan when they offered this oil on canvas entitled La Pesca Fortunata (A good haul) in their sale of 19th century pictures on December 13.