There are a total of 35 valuable paintings that belonged to the lawyer Gianni Agnelli during his lifetime which have disappeared from Italian territory. These results were reached by the investigators of the financial police and the carabinieri of the cultural heritage protection unit of Rome, coordinated by the deputy prosecutor Giovanni Conzo and his deputy Stefano Opilio, who in September 2025 opened an investigation into the receiving and illicit export of works of art currently against unknown persons. The Rai 3 television program Report brought the issue to light with a series of reports.
Among the missing works are also the 13 that were found in June 2024 in the Lingotto vault in Turin: they were all copies, so the originals are being sought. To identify the remaining 22, a list was decisive, complete with documentation, provided by Margherita Agnelli (69 years old), who has long since opened a dispute over the inheritance of her father and mother Marella Caracciolo against her children John (49 years old), Lapo (47) and Ginevra Elkann (46). The paintings in the Lawyer’s collection, many of which were purchased in the 1980s in the United States, are worth tens of millions and could be in Switzerland, although their placement (or, at least, part of them) in Morocco cannot be ruled out.
The failure to report the move to the Ministry is contested
One of the most valuable paintings in the collection is entitled ‘The mystery and melancholy of a street’ and was painted by Giorgio De Chirico. That alone was valued at seven and a half million euros. It was initially one of 13 paintings thought to be at the Lingotto. But there, as with the others, there is only one copy. The Agnellis or Elkanns, as owners, had the right to marry them wherever they wanted but, since they were works located on Italian territory, they would have had to communicate this to the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. Failure to report, if the original reappears one day, will require the State to initiate the procedure to confiscate the work.
Even ministerial officials risk getting into trouble
If the owners who made the moves, assuming they are still alive, risk ending up under investigation, the same also applies to the officials of the Ministry itself. In fact, the latter would have had the obligation to inform themselves about the state of the works also through direct inspection (essentially: looking at them firsthand) and reporting the place where they were kept. The lack of checks, according to investigators, could have led to the disappearance of the originals and their replacement through the creation of copies. The hypothesis is that for several paintings this could have happened while Marella Caracciolo was ill and living in Switzerland. In addition to the aforementioned painting by De Chirico, among those that would have ended up like this there would also be ‘The Staircase of Farewells’ by Giacomo Balla and ‘Glaçons, effet blanc’ by Claude Monet.
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