In a high-security warehouse in London, under ideal temperature and humidity conditions, a painting that is more than five centuries old and is estimated to be worth about 30 million euros has been guarded for almost a year .
That canvas is the work of Alessandro Filipepi, who has gone down in art history with the nickname Botticelli (skipjack), it is not known whether because he was obese or because he gave the wine more than the bill.
The painting is a portrait of the poet (and mercenary) Michele Marullo, who achieved considerable fame in Renaissance Florence. Although born in Constantinople, when it fell into the hands of the Turks, Marullo went into exile with his family to the Medici court, where he arrived as a child. Over the years he became a renowned scholar who, in addition to the pen, repeatedly wielded the sword to fight the Turks and fight the army of César Borgia.
That painting, known as Portrait of Michele Marullo Tarcaniota, is the last Botticelli in private hands outside of Italy. It was bought in 1929 by the Catalan financier and politician Francesc d'Assís Cambó i Cambó for 1.2 million pesetas of the time. It is now owned by Cambó's only daughter, Helena Cambó, and the 14 offspring she had with her husband, Ramón Guardans. And now that picture is for sale.
The Guardans-Cambó family entrusted the renowned Italian dealer Carlo Orsi a year ago to try to get a buyer for the portrait. Owner of the Trinity Fine Art gallery, located in the heart of the select London neighborhood of Mayfair, Orsi specializes in great figures of ancient art. Many works that have passed through his hands today are found in some of the most prestigious museums in the world, including the Metropolitan of New York, the Gallery of the Academy of Venice, the Museum d'Orsay in Paris, the National Gallery of Canada. .. In the next edition of the International Biennial of Antiquities of Florence, one of the most prestigious and veteran in the world and that this year will be held from September 21 to 29, its gallery will present among others a bust of Urban VIII made by Bernini o La Sagrada familia with San Juanito de Domenico Beccafumi.
The Portrait of Michele Marullo will go on sale in London at the beginning of October in the framework of Frieze Masters, an art fair (especially contemporary) that moves astronomical figures of money. The news has unleashed the alarm in Spain, given that Botticelli's work was declared in 1988 of Cultural Interest (BIC) and that implies that it cannot be separated from the Spanish Historical Heritage ....
"It seems as if the sale of this painting had become a matter of State for Spain," says Crónica Carlo Orsi mockingly. And he clarifies: «The painting has been in London for about a year. It was accompanied by a temporary export permit with a year of vigor and renewable. And there is no problem that it is a piece declared of Cultural Interest and that it must maintain its link with Spain, because obviously the person who buys it will be informed of that legislation and what it implies. It could be bought by a Spaniard who until now had not been aware of the sale of this work. It could be bought by a Mexican industrialist willing to move to live in Spain. Or it could be bought by a Latin American businessman who had it on his farm for five years and then gave it another five years on loan to the Prado Museum. Why not? There are several formulas, ”says Orsi.
The Portrait of Michele Marullo has been in fact the last 15 years on loan to the Prado Museum by the Guardans-Cambó family. And in all that time the cultural institution has never shown the slightest interest in acquiring the painting. It is for this reason that now the family has decided to put it on sale in the international arena.
“The painting has been on loan for many years in the Prado and the relationship between the family and the Spanish cultural authorities is good. But, as far as I know, the Prado has not shown interest in buying that Botticelli work, ”explains Carlo Orsi.
The portrait is, for many reasons, a fascinating work. It is true that Botticelli made several portraits of men, but the vast majority had as protagonists some of the handsome young men who were part of the entourage that surrounded Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici. After all, Botticelli was not only homosexual - in 1502 he was denounced for that "vice" - but it was he who imposed in his time the canon that marked the attractiveness of men .
"He was the artist who codified male beauty between 1470 and 1490, through both his portraits and the many angels and young saints who populated his religious paintings," says Carl Brandon Strehlkee, one of the world's leading authorities in the Florentine Renaissance , curator of the exhibition on Fra Angelico that can still be seen in the Prado Museum and author of the 45-page catalog on the Portrait of Marullo that Trinity Fine Arts has just edited, the Carlo Orsi gallery that is now selling that work.
There are only two male portraits of Botticelli in which the protagonists are not young, but mature men, men of a certain age. One is the portrait of Lorenzi Lorenzi , an eminent humanist who in June 1502, with 42 years, committed suicide by throwing himself at the bottom of a well burdened by the debts that weighed on him. Botticelli portrayed him in a painting, today at the Philadelphia Museum, in which Lorenzi appears kindly and dressed in the characteristic robe of academics.
And the only other Botticelli portrait of a mature man is Marullo, who died in 1500 at the age of 48. Marullo died drowned in the Cecina river when he returned to Florence after visiting a friend in Volterra who, unsuccessfully, tried to convince him not to travel that day because of the heavy rains that plagued the area.
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Botticelli, according to experts, would have painted Marullo's portrait in his last decade or shortly after his death. Carl Brandon Strehlkee, meanwhile, is committed to making it a posthumous portrait. It would probably have been Marullo's widow, Alessandra Scala, who commissioned the artist. Alessandra was the daughter of the late Chancellor of the Florentine Republic Bartolomeo Scala and therefore had a succulent fortune, because he needed to be rich to be able to order a painting from the painter.
Besides being wealthy, Marullo's wife was a woman with intellectual studies and concerns: she wrote poems, dominated the Greek ... Perhaps because of all that, her marriage to Marullo worked very well. To the point that when writing his novel Romola Victorian writer George Eliot was inspired by them to create the main characters, a young intellectual and a Greek and adventurous scholar.
The first mention of the portrait of Marullo that is known is from 1521, when Paolo Giovio , who at the time lived in Florence, states that in his collection of portraits there is one of Marullo, although he does not mention the name of the artist. In fact, later the portrait was attributed to the Florentine painter Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio . Around 1822, and after several vicissitudes, the painting ended up in the hands of Eugène de Beauharnais, son of the first marriage of Josefina Bonaparte and adoptive offspring of Napoleon. But in the correspondence of the time, this portrait is spoken of as the work of Masaccio.
After the premature death of Eugène de Beauharnais, Marullo's portrait began to swell the funds of the Leuchtenberg collection in Munich. The third Duke of Leuchtenberg took the painting to St. Petersburg and eventually fell into the hands of London art dealer Arthur J. Sulley, who sold it to Berlin cotton and industrial collector Eduard Georg Simon. And, after Simon died, the painting was acquired by the Catalan industrialist and politician Francesc d'Assís Cambó i Cambó i Batlle for 1.2 million pesetas.
But that portrait was not the only work of Sandro Botticelli that Cambó had. Among the various pieces that the Catalan politician and financier bought in 1929 from dealer Joseph Spiridon were three magnificent Botticelli paintings on wood depicting scenes from the history of Nastagio degli Onesti taken from the Decameron de Boccaccio. In 1941 Cambó donated those three Botticelli boards and other important paintings to the Prado Museum. But in that lot Marullo's portrait was not included, which the politician wanted to continue enjoying.
“Cambó had Marullo's portrait in the living room of his house, placed on an easel in front of the sofa. I saw him at all hours, lived with him. The portraits tend to have something spiritual, and Marullo's is a very intense portrait, very botticellian, ”explains Carlo Orsi. «I think that one of the reasons why Cambó liked this painting so much is because he saw himself, the history of exile». Cambó, who had been a minister with Alfonso XIII and later a deputy in the Republican Courts, was exiled to Switzerland when the civil war broke out in 1936. Although at first he did not position himself in favor of Franco and the rebel military, however, he ended up doing so in the face of fear that an excessively leftist Republic would be restored.
After the death of Cambó in 1947, the bulk of his art collection - including works by Sebastiano del Piombo, Titian, Cranach the Elder, Tintoretto, Veronese, El Greco, Rubens, Tiepolo, Gainsborough or Goya - became part of the then Museum of Art of Catalonia. But Marullo's portrait remained in the hands of the family since Helena Cambó, the politician's daughter, decided to keep it for her personal heritage. Years later he explained that he had chosen that work because of how much it meant to his father.
Now that portrait will go on sale between October 3 and 6 at Frieze Masters, the contemporary art fair that will host London during those dates. What does a renaissance master paint there?
«Among the collectors of contemporary art there are people with a lot, a lot of money. You just have to see that last May Rabbit, a sculpture by Jeff Koons, was sold in New York for 90 million dollars, ”says Carlo Orsi. «It is a clientele that I do not know and probably does not know the ancient art. But it has a high spending capacity, superior to that of the vast majority of collectors of ancient art. And Botticelli is so modern ... Marullo's Portrait can be perfectly next to a Pollock, a Picasso or a Damien Hirst ».
Do you want it? Well, get 30 million euros ...
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