VASARI ARCHIVE SALE FELL THROUGH AFTER BUYER DIED
VASARI ARCHIVE SALE FELL THROUGH AFTER BUYER DIED
(ANSA) - Rome, October 26 - The purchase of Renaissance art chronicler Giorgio Vasari's archives for 150 million euros has fallen through because the buyer is dead, A go-between said Wednesday.
In an interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Vasilij Stepanov, who represented an undisclosed Russian magnate who wanted to buy the archives, said the deal has been off since 9 September when his client died in a car crash.
Stepanov said ''it was all in place, I'd even been paid for my services and then everything fell through''.
News that Russian businessmen had bought the archive hit the Italian media last week with a plea for help from Arezzo mayor Giuseppe Fanfani who said the state had 160 days to match the Russians' offer or risk losing possession of the archives.
Vasari's notes and letters, which include correspondence with Michelangelo, Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I de' Medici as well as a number of popes, are bound to his historic home in Arezzo by a special legal provision.
However, they still officially belong to the estate of the late Count Giovanni Festari, whose descendants hoped to revive the sale after it's would-be buyer's death.
Nonetheless, the sale aroused a chorus of demands from art critics and politicians for the government to stop the operation either through legal channels or by buying the documents.
Some observers, including Milan's former culture chief and prominent art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, however, thought the amount of money put up for the archives was well above its true market value and suspected an attempt to fool the state into paying out a huge sum of money to beat a fictitious move to buy them.
Rome prosecutors last week announced they were investigating the archives' sale to determine if it was legitimate.
News of the sale came at a bad time for city officials, who are in the midst of planning festivities for the 500th anniversary of Vasari's birth in 2011.
A mannerist painter and architect, Vasari is probably best known for his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, a series of biographies about the lives and times of Italy's most famous Renaissance artists. Photo: Vasari's archives
