Enough of surprises. And of travel. Christ mocked, the small box of the painter primitive Cenni di Pepo, called Cimabue (1272-1302), found by chance this year in the home of an elderly woman who believed that it was a work without any value, and that ended up being auctioned for 24 million euros, will not come out of France. The Ministry of Culture has announced the freezing of the impending move of the extraordinary —by its origin and by its finding— painting and the intention of the French State to acquire it for his collection public and expose it, probably, in the museum of the Louvre.
“After the opinion of the Commission of consultation of the national treasures, the minister of Culture has signed the order refusing the export certificate in December for this rare panel”, announced the Ministry of Culture on Monday night. At the same time, he has been conferred the status of “national treasure” for a period of 30 months, during which time the State will seek the “necessary funds for their acquisition for the benefit of the national collections public”, with the final goal, said the ministry, that Christ mocked, “to be able to meet with the Maestà”, the work of the same master primitive Italian that is exposed in the Louvre.
“Thanks to the time granted by this measure, you will be able to mobilize all efforts to ensure that this exceptional work can enrich the national collections,” held the minister of Culture, Franck Riester. According to the France Presse agency, if, at the end of this term does not manage to muster the necessary funds to make an offer “that takes into account the international market prices,” according to the law on heritage, have been expected “possibility of reconciliation” to ensure that the work remains in any case in France.
With this decision, it slows down the transfer of the so-called “miracle of Cimabue,” which went to auction last October with an initial price of between 4 and 6 million euros and ended up being acquired for 24 million, making the painting primitive most expensive in the world sold in a public auction. The buyers were, as revealed by the French press, the couple of collectors chilean Álvaro Saieh Bendeck and Ana Guzman Ahnfelt, installed in the united States and specialised in the art of the Italian Renaissance. The couple exhibits currently your collection Alana, consisting of 75 works of art of the leading Italian masters of the centuries XIII to XVII, for the first time in Paris at the Jacquemart-André museum. It is, according to the museum, “one of the private collections of art of the Italian Renaissance most precious and secret of the world”.
Christ mocked, by the who pushed museums as the Metropolitan in New York, is a small box painted around 1280 on poplar wood of 25.8 per of 20.3 centimeters. Was part of a series of panels in which the artist prerrenacentista depicted scenes from the passion of Christ. The painting “share specifics” with other panels known of Cimabue, The flagellation of Christ (New York, Collection Frick) and The Virgin and child, which is in the National Gallery in London.
none of this I knew the nonagenaria that had for years hung between the kitchen and the living room of his home in the French town of Compiègne, north of Paris, convinced it was a painting, probably a Russian icon, of no great value, and whose origin was unknown. His huge error was discovered when the elderly woman decided to move to a residence of the third age and the family went to an auction house to appraise the furnishings of the house and put them on sale. In total, the value of the objects of the old woman is no more than 6,000 euros and several items of furniture ended up in the landfill. That might have also been the target of the Christ mocked, not because of the adjusting of attention and consulted with experts, that they ended up certifying the immense value of the work. The original owner will not ever know that the box before that went for years without giving more attention could end up being visited by millions of curious people in one of the major museums of France in the future. According to AFP, the woman died shortly after the sale.
