Italian prosecutors are investigating claims that members of the Agnelli family arranged for works by Monet and de Chirico to be replaced with forgeries in their villas during an inheritance dispute.
Gianni Agnelli, the late patriarch of the family long known as the “Italian Kennedys”, turned Fiat into a global powerhouse and presided over an empire that also included Ferrari and Juventus. He also expanded the family art collection that included more than 600 works by artists such as Modigliani, Renoir and Matisse.
After Gianni’s death in 2003 and that of his wife, Marella, in 2019, his legacy became embroiled in a dispute. Their daughter, Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen, claims her children from her first marriage — John, Lapo and Ginevra Elkann — cheated her out of her share of the fortune, including works that she says were assigned to her under a 2004 agreement with Marella.
An investigation focuses on 13 missing works listed in the accord, including Francis Bacon’s Study for a Pope, Picasso engravings titled Torse de femme and John Singer Sargent’s A Street in Algiers, which de Pahlen claims have gone missing.
Gianni Agnelli and his wife, Marella, in 1986
LAURENT SOLA/GAMMA-RAPHO VIA GETTY IMAGES
A former staff member at the Agnellis’ Rome residence told carabinieri that paintings were removed in 2008 when Marella fell ill. Another worker at the residence reported that a painting by Giacomo Balla had been replaced with “one of inferior quality”.
Shippers told investigators they had been asked to transport copies from the Rome property between 2016 and 2018.
Gigi Moncalvo, an author who has written about the Agnelli family, said cleaners and other staff who had worked at the Agnelli homes had punished John Elkann, the present head of the Agnellis’ Stellantis automotive group.
“They were very angry with him,” Moncalvo told The Times. “After sacking them, when his grandmother was no longer around to be looked after, he threw them out rather than hiring them at Stellantis.”
Last year copies of three missing works — Balla’s The Stairway of Farewells (1908), de Chirico’s Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914), and Monet’s Glaçons, effet blanc (Ice floes, white effect) — were found in a vault at Fiat’s former Lingotto plant in Turin after de Pahlen reported them missing.
The Balla and de Chirico copies had previously hung at the Agnelli residence in Rome, while the Monet had been displayed at their Villa Frescot in Turin. The original works are missing.
The 2004 accord valued the collection at levels some say were deliberately deflated. The assessment put the value of Monet’s Glaçons, effet blanc at €4 million but Sotheby’s later valued it at €17.5 million.
“The values were kept low so Marella could pay as little tax as possible,” Moncalvo said. Investigators are trying to establish whether the Agnellis may have unknowingly hung copies of the paintings on their walls and who ordered their removal. One theory is that originals were moved abroad, a transfer that would have required permission from the Italian culture ministry.
This month he agreed to perform community service and pay €183 million to settle a case over unpaid inheritance tax.