How can we calculate the value of an ancient work of art? A short love story…

How can we calculate the value of an ancient work of art? Is it that value linked to its history? Or to its beauty? The community? Love? Perhaps all of these things together? Listen to this short story.

Turin, Italy, January 2013. In the collection of the Gam museum there is a painting by Massimo D’Azeglio (Turin 1798-1866), an aristocrat, painter, author, and statesman who was a leader of the movement that advocated an Italian national revival (Risorgimento) by the expulsion of all foreign influences from the then-divided Italian states. So a very important person in the history of Turin and Italy.

The painting is a “Still Life with Flowers and objects”, 1843, and portrays, next to a vase of flowers, a cup of chocolate with the crest of a noble family.
This latter detail had led the scholars of the Palazzo Madama museum (Turin) in a long work of historical reconstruction, and they found the real entire set of china cup represented in the painting: a 42-piece Meissen porcelain service dating from around 1730 that was part of the Marouf Collection. In May 2013 it would have been sold at a Bonhams auction, in London, for the price of £66,000 (around €80,000).

At that point, it was important for the museum to obtain that service so significant for the city and for the museum itself (the Taparelli d’Azeglio was a family that played a leading role in modern Italian history and whose last descendant, Marquis Emanuele, was the director and patron of the Museo Civico of Turin). The museum, however, did not have enough money to buy it. Thus, they launched the first Italian crowdfunding campaign to acquire that work. Well, in two months, from February, 1st to March 31st, the museum raised €96,203.90 from 1591 contributors.

The success has several reasons, amongst which is to be counted, without doubt, the virtuous relationship that has developed between the public and the museum of Palazzo Madama.

But there is a further detail to be pinpointed. Most of the donations did amount to a few euros or a few hundreds at most. However, a donation in particular was of 12,000 euros. When the museum staff saw this latter check, they wanted to make sure it was not a mistake of the donor. So they tracked the person who had sent the money discovering that the donor was a not rich lady, but the widow of a worker, who lived on the outskirts of the city. Once at home of the old woman, the staff of the museum found out that it wasn’t a mistake: the lady had donated to the museum, consciously, most of his life savings. Why? “Because when my husband was alive, we spent some wonderful moments together walking through the halls of the Palazzo Madama museum and looking at its beautiful porcelain” she replied.

All this elements, from the decision to launch the crowdfunding campaign to the romantic donation by the old lady are enough, for us, to think that the real value of a work of art is the one its lovers give it.

August 31, 2017