Overview

• Prosecutors in Rome are investigating illicit export and receiving of cultural goods in a case currently opened against unknown persons.
• The Carabinieri cultural heritage unit is leading the inquiry under deputy prosecutor Giovanni Conzo and prosecutor Stefano Opilio.
• Three canvases — Balla’s La scala degli addii, De Chirico’s Mistero e malinconia di una strada, and Monet’s Glaçons, effet blanc — were found only as copies in a Lingotto vault.
• Estate documents value those three works at about €2 million, €7 million and €4 million, and no authorization has been located for any foreign transfer.
• Ten additional pieces remain unaccounted for, including works attributed to Balthus, Francis Bacon, Robert Indiana, Georges Mathieu, Pablo Picasso and John Singer Sargent, as investigators analyze inventories, family photographs and witness statements in a dispute tied to the inheritance case.