Volatilized.
Forty-nine gold works of art by Italian sculptor Umberto Mastroianni were stolen on the night of Tuesday March 5 to Wednesday March 6 while they were on display at the Vittoriale degli Italiani, a historic museum located on the banks of the lake de Garde, in the Italian Alps.
According to the Italian agency Ansa, the theft was discovered by Vittoriale officials, who found the premises empty of all the works, except for one, on Wednesday morning when they arrived at the site.
The carabinieri of the cultural property protection unit were tasked with the investigation to find the 49 pieces that disappeared.
Their total value is estimated at around 1.2 million euros.
The fear of seeing works melted down for their gold
The exhibition has been running since December 30 and was due to end this Friday.
Named “Like hot and fluid gold, the golds of Umberto Mastroianni”, it brought together 30 jewels and 20 sculptures, made between 1950 and 1990. Died in 1998 at the age of 87, Umberto Mastroianni was the uncle from the famous director Marcello Mastroianni.
The work “Blasphemous Portrait” has been missing since Wednesday.
DINO CAPODIFERRO / Il Vittoriale degli Italiani / AFP
“Everything indicates that this was a theft on command, including the fact that it happened the day before the exhibition closed.
We hope that this is the case, because the other option would be that the criminals wanted to seize the 4.5 kg of gold that the works contain,” declared the director of the Vittoriale, Giordano Bruno Guerri, during the inauguration of a new exhibition this Saturday.
In which case, the works would then be lost forever, underlines Ansa.
Giordano Bruno Guerri now leaves room for the work of the carabinieri: “It’s a theft worthy of a film, so there will be an investigation worthy of a film.
» He specified that the team at the scene assumed that the thugs had intervened around 5:30 a.m. on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday.
“We are currently viewing the recordings from our surveillance cameras but also those from neighboring villas,” he concluded.