The Villa Bertelli Foundation will host the presentation of the book "La donazione dimenticata" inside the Winter Garden. The incredible story of the Contini Bonacossi Collection "by Avv. Sandro Pazzi.

Sandro Pazzi is the lawyer of the Contini Bonacossi and Papi families, heirs of the senator Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi. He participated in the negotiations for the donation of works of art from the Contini Bonacossi Collection to the Italian State and assisted the heirs in all subsequent legal proceedings involving the Contini Bonacossi and Papi families.

In 2012 Ugo Contini Bonacossi, a few days before his death, asked him to write and document the troubled story of the donation.

In the first fifty years of the twentieth century the counts Alessandro and Vittoria Contini Bonacossi created a great luck, initially thanks to the trade of collectible stamps, to become then among the most important antique art dealers of the last century. A life, theirs, spent in contact with the protagonists of world collecting, perpetually traveling between old Europe and the young America of patrons and industrialists. The Contini Bonacossi allocated part of the works of art purchased to their personal collection which, as early as 1939, was considered priceless, being composed of marvelous paintings and sculptures, as well as countless and extraordinary minor art objects. The decision to donate this precious collection to the State gave rise to one of the most controversial and troubled events of Italian collecting, which is finally told in these pages by those who witnessed it. An exciting and documented story of the events and people who transformed the most important 20th century donation of works of art to the Italian State in a scandal that lasted half a century, and which still continues to arouse interest.

When: 12/16/2017

Where: Piazza Garibaldi - Forte dei Marmi (Forte dei Marmi), Forte dei Marmi

Time: ore 17:30 - 19:30

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