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Ana Gonçalves Magalhães The Italian Art World and
São Paulo Museum Collections in the

Aftermath of World War II
Abstract The present article analyzes the engagement of prominent Italian art world fig-
ures – Margherita Sarfatti and Pietro Maria Bardi, in primis – in the creation of
the collections of the two most important museums of São Paulo: the São Paulo
Museum of Modern Art (MAM), and the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP). Our
aim has been to analyze how these Italian art critics helped to shape Brazil’s
understanding of modern art at a time when this understanding was still contro-
versial. The article seeks to emphasize the complementarity of these museums’
collections and to highlight that both used the same network of agents to broker
the acquisitions made on their behalf. How recent immigrants from the Euro
pean art world were able to salvage their careers in South America at a significant
historical moment when the international postwar situation had created the
opportunity for new art markets to flourish, is also described. By 1945 there was
a growing Allied-led effort to recover lost and/or confiscated artworks and return
them to their rightful owners. This action ran parallel to the immediate efforts
made to rebuild the art market through the organization of exhibitions and
other para-diplomatic initiatives throughout Europe, in the United States, and in
South America.
Beginning from provenance research, we have sought to rebuild the net-
work of art agents that were involved in the acquisitions made for the two Bra-
zilian art museums. In so doing it has been possible to highlight the active role
the Brazilian art world played in the international art system, and to tackle the
presence of foreign art collections from a different perspective: as an inherent
part of the Brazilian art historical debate.
RJBH Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 44 | 2019/ 2020
449
Since the 1990s, Brazilian art historians have attempted to throw new light on
the history of the art museums in their country. This is especially true in the case
of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM), and of the Museu de Arte
de São Paulo (MASP).1 This investigative boom corresponds to the professional-
ization of the museum structure in the country, which has also contributed to
the organization of museum archives – a vital element in revising the way the
museums’ narratives are written. By the end of the twentieth century, the history
of these two museums still mostly relied on the accounts given by the protago-
nists of their founding.2 The publication of Maria Cecília França Lourenço’s re-
search on the history of the São Paulo museums was one of the first to analyze
their formation from a scholarly perspective,3 and opened up the possibility for
new research into the topic.4
However, research has not yet been conducted into how their foundational
collections were acquired and the circumstances and implications of that initial
collection-building. Both MAM and MASP were founded in the aftermath of
World War II, and their first acquisition campaigns essentially ran in the first six
years of their existence, i.e., from 1946 to 1952. They also engaged immigrants in
Brazil as possible patrons and donors, as well as agents outside the country,
tempted by the prospect of carving out a new career for themselves in the face of
the extreme situation (and sometimes their tarnished reputations) in Europe in
the years following the Allied victory. This aspect is frequently mentioned by
Brazilian art historians when discussing the artworks in MASP’s collection, but,
while repeatedly questioning their authenticity (under discussion since the early
1950s), they nevertheless have fallen short of conducting a precise study into
their provenance.5
1 Acknowledgement: I would like to thank the post-doc researcher Renata Dias Ferraretto
Moura Rocco, who helped me with the revision of this article, and Alecsandra Matias and Elaine
Maziero at MAC USP for their support in organizing the images of the museum’s works repro-
duced in this article.
The two Brazilian museums under discussion here have placed their collections online. The
artworks mentioned in this article can be consulted in the MAC USP online collections (www.
acervo.mac.usp.br) and in the MASP online collections: www.masp.art.br. The museum now
bears the name of its founder, Assis Chateaubriand, and is officially called Museu de Arte de
São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand.
2 In the case of MAM, see Mendes de Almeida 1976. Mendes de Almeida was himself one
of the proponents and defenders of Modernism in São Paulo, projecting his own reading of
modern art onto the Brazilian Modernist experience as a whole and making São Paulo’s MAM
the beacon of modern art in the country. As for MASP, see, for instance, Bardi 1956. Bardi left
his mark on MASP while he was the director of the museum, also intertwining its history with
that of Modernism in Brazil.
3 See Lourenço 1994. Her book resulted from a research project she coordinated with a
group of graduate students and scholars at the School of Art and Architecture of the Universi-
ty of São Paulo (FAU USP) in the late 1980s. That project anticipated the rise of new undergra-
duate and graduate programs in art history that have appeared in Brazil in the two last decades.
Today, one of the research groups investigating the history of art institutions and collections in
Brazil is the Modos Group, which also edits the art journal Revista Modos, URL: https://www.
publionline.iar.unicamp.br/index.php/mod/index (accessed 30.11.2020), and has recently edit
ed the volume dedicated to the history of museums in the country. See Histórias da Arte em
Museus 2020.
4 There is an impressive list of M.A. theses and Ph.D. dissertations written in the last twenty
years that take aspects of the history of MAM and MASP as their theme. In regard to the argu-
ment of this article, see Barbosa 2015, which was an original attempt at producing a compara-
tive study of the making of the two museums.
5 Until the 1990s, Brazilian art historians tended to dismiss the artworks in the collection of
MASP. Being mainly a collection of European art, it was understood as something not per-
taining to art history in Brazil. In addition to this, ever since the 1950s, rumors have circulated
on the authenticity of certain artworks in the collection. This shadow of doubt led the museum
director, Italian émigré art critic and gallerist Pietro Maria Bardi, to organize an exhibition of the
450 Magalhães | The Italian Art World and São Paulo Museum Collections RJBH 44 | 2019/2020
This article thus seeks to analyze the engagement of prominent figures in
the Italian art world in the making of these two museum collections, and how
they helped shape the Brazilian understanding of modern art that was then still
fluid and under debate. It is our aim to stress the complementarity of both mu-
seums’ collections and to highlight that both used the same network of go-
betweens to broker the acquisitions made on their behalf. The present article
describes how recent immigrants formerly of the European art world were able
to salvage their careers in South America at the very point in history when the
international postwar situation had created the opportunity for new art markets
to flourish.6 By 1945 there was a growing Allied-led effort to recover lost and / or
confiscated artworks and return them to their rightful owners. This action ran
parallel to the immediate efforts made to rebuild the art market, through the
organization of exhibitions and other para-diplomatic initiatives all over Europe,
in the United States, and in South America.
Our study thus involves Italian artworks acquired by MAM and by MASP
with the help of Italian brokers, against the backdrop of the great turmoil experi-
enced in Italian cities in the early postwar years.7 The artworks purchased for
Brazil were put up for sale or shown in exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic.
It is high time that Brazilian art historians reconsider the role of the country’s
rising contemporary art world within the wider context of the international art
market. In addition to this, one must consider that the sudden availability of
certain artworks or private collections was made possible precisely because of the
tragedy that devastated the European continent during the period of National
Socialist rule. As the true scale of the Holocaust emerged at the end of World War II,
it became clear that it essentially entailed two campaigns, each of enormous and
catastrophic proportions: on the one hand the extermination of people and, on
the other, the dislocation of cultural and artistic heritage. The mass extermina-
tion in Nazi death camps took place only after the National Socialists and their
allies had already set up a very sophisticated system of accessioning, storing, tri-
aging, and selling artworks.8 In their efforts to dismantle and appropriate a rtistic
heritage, the Nazis enlisted the support of highly specialized professionals, such
as art critics, museum directors, gallerists, art historians, and artists. If Brazilian
MASP collection that toured first Europe then the United States from 1952 to 1957. See 103
dipinti del Museo d’Arte di San Paolo del Brasile 1954, the Italian version of the catalogue of
this touring exhibition.
6 Although there are very important scholarly contributions on the number of Europeans
emigrating to Brazil to escape the world conflict, such studies have tended to concentrate on
social history. In 2018, Helouise Costa and Daniel Rincon curated the exhibition A arte dege-
nerada de Lasar Segall (The Degenerate Art of Lasar Segall) at the Museu Lasar Segall, which
was followed by an international conference at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Univer-
sidade de São Paulo (MAC USP) and which attempted to evaluate the impact in Brazil of the
Entartete Kunst exhibition of 1937; see Arte degenerada 80 anos. Repercussões no Brasil
2018. This was the first scholarly event in the field of art history in Brazil to consider the issues
of provenance research and the presentation of a few case studies in the collections of São
Paulo museums.
7 Rome was liberated by Allied troops on June 4, 1944, whereas the liberation of the rest of
the Italian territory was only completed on April 25, 1945. This period is marked by the dire set
of circumstances faced by the average citizen in the face of a lack of infrastructure, rationing,
and difficulties in communication, circumstances that would continue to plague the territory
until 1947.
8 In 1998, the United Nations organized a conference to push Western countries to investi-
gate these cases, which resulted in the creation of special departments of provenance research
in museums, and the establishment of thorough research practices in the field. See Nicholas
1994; Yeide / Akinsha / Walsh 2001. More recently, see also the ongoing research project on loo-
ted art during the Nazi era at the Freie Universität Berlin, URL: http: //www.geschkult.fu-berlin.
de/en/e/db_entart_kunst/index.html (accessed 30.11.2020), under coordination of Prof. Meike
Hoffmann, as well as the exhibition curated by Prof. Olaf Peters; see Degenerate Art 2014.
RJBH 44 | 2019/2020 Magalhães | The Italian Art World and São Paulo Museum Collections 451
collectors and museum patrons had attempted to create the São Paulo museums
at any other point in the nation’s history, they would certainly not have been able
to purchase the caliber of artworks found in their collections today.9
In what follows, we speculate on the collaboration between the Italian art
critics Margherita Sarfatti (1880 –1961) and Pietro Maria Bardi (1900 –1999) and
art historian Bernard Berenson (1865 –1959), as well as their active role in foster-
ing a market for European Old Masters in South America in the aftermath of
World War II, while also actively promoting Italian modern art. Exhibiting and
collecting Old Masters in combination with modern art was, as we will see, a
strategy they borrowed from the ventennio’s cultural policies, which were to gain
a new meaning in the postwar period, both in Brazil and the United States.
The Italian Artworks at MASP: The Tintorettos and the Activities of

Italian Agents and Intermediaries in South America
Founded in 1947, MASP is the most important (if not the only) art collection of
its kind in South America. Its patron and founder, the media tycoon Francisco
Bandeira de Mello Assis Chateaubriand (1892 –1968) was known not only as a
leader of Brazil’s economic elite but also as a very influential political figure.10
Chatô, as he was dubbed, is known to have used his political influence to foster
his pet project of creating a museum of European art for Brazil, and, as at first it
would seem, leapt at the fortuitous opportunity of placing its stewardship in the
hands of the Italian art critic and gallerist Pietro Maria Bardi as its founding di-
rector.11 The latter came to Brazil on a visit in November 1946, as a representative
of COREITAL (Comitato per le Relazioni Economiche Italia America Latina),
bringing exhibitions of Italian modern art and Old Master paintings to Latin
America and disseminating the new Italian art publications, some of which he
worked for as editor. Bardi was then owner of the gallery Studio d’Arte Palma,
9 The ripple effect created by the Washington Conference in the 1990s also reached Brazil,
one of the forty countries to sign the new agreement that came out of the conference. In
1997, Brazilian government established a special committee to investigate possible Nazi-con-
fiscated art in the country. This committee worked until January 1999 and presented a report
on its findings, later filed at the Brazilian Ministry of Justice. These documents cannot be loca-
ted today. I thank my MA student, Fabiana Aiolfe, for sharing this information with me. She
came across this material while conducting provenance research into three prints belonging to
the collections of MAC USP, which she was able to securely identify as not being Holocaust-era
assets. It is worth noting that as part of its work, members of the Brazilian committee on Nazi-
looted art visited MASP, where some Nazi-looted objects might have ended up.
10 For a biography on Chateaubriand, see Morais 1994. Morais was the first to study Chate-
aubriand’s private papers, as well as having access to the business archives of his media com-
pany, Diários Associados. His analysis of Chateaubriand as a wingman of Brazilian president
Getúlio Vargas (1930 –1945, 1950 –1954) is one of the cornerstones of his biography, hence its
title (in translation): “The King of Brazil.”
11 See Tentori 1990. The Portuguese translation was published by the Instituto Lina Bo e
Pietro Maria Bardi and Imprensa Oficial do Estado de São Paulo in 2000. See also the ongoing
research of Paolo Rusconi (Rusconi 2020). While speaking of Bardi as having a “second life” in
Brazil, Rusconi seeks to point out his many contradictions, and his attempt of rehabilitation in
his new adopted country Bardi occupied a central role in the Italian art world in the 1930s,
when he was nominated the first director of the Galleria d’Arte di Roma (the exhibition gallery
of the artists’ union Sindacato Nazionale Fascista Belle Arti. But in his defense of Rationalist
architecture (especially during the debates surrounding the inauguration of the Casa del Fas-
cio, in Como, designed by Giuseppe Terragni), Bardi made a few enemies in the higher political
circles of the National Fascist Party. Playing the role of the polemist, he built his career as an
art critic and gallerist while benefiting from Fascist cultural structures, having powerful allies
among the fascist elite including Mussolini himself. Scholars like Rusconi, Rifkind, and others
working on Bardi’s career as a gallerist, journalist, and cultural promoter have to contend with
the fact that his papers are divided between São Paulo and Milan, and that a portion of the
documents that came back to Italy were lost.
which he had founded in 1944, in Rome.12 His gallery not only showcased mod-
ern Italian art and design but also works by Old Masters, and was even equipped
with its own authentication office and conservation laboratory. Accordingly, the
first exhibition he presented in Brazil was titled Exposição de Pintura Italiana
Antiga and was hosted by the Brazilian Ministry of Health and Education in Rio
de Janeiro shortly after his arrival in Brazil.13 The exhibition brought fifty-four
works for sale, and resulted in eight acquisitions that ended up in MASP’s collec-
tion in 1947, when the museum was officially founded.14
Bardi’s arrival in Brazil changed the course of his life. With the offer that
Chateaubriand made him, he decided to emigrate to the country, and went on to
hold the position of MASP director until the early 1990s. From recent research,
one learns that Bardi had in fact already been to South America, travelling on a
ship along the coast of Brazil in 1933, accompanying an exhibition on Italian
Rationalist architecture bound for Buenos Aires.15 It was then that his first con-
tacts with the South American art world (primarily art journalists) were estab-
lished, contacts he seems to have subsequently maintained via correspondence.
Months before his arrival in Rio de Janeiro in 1946, he had been contacted by the
secretary of Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho, one of the founding patrons of
MAM,16 requesting lists of works of modern art in his gallery for possible pur-
chase for the new museum collection.17 In the light of such new evidence, one
must reconsider Chateaubriand’s apparently hasty decision to offer him the job
of museum director. It now seems much more likely that connections between
Bardi and Chateaubriand already existed, and that such ties only grew, partly
because Bardi was well acquainted with the Brazilian press through Italian émi-
gré editors and journalists already working in the country, and partly because the
association Bardi represented at the time (COREITAL) contained other figures
with strong connections with Brazil.18
12 See Pozzoli 2013.

13 See Exposição de pintura italiana antiga, do século XIII ao século XVIII 1946. The exhibi-
tion was organized by Bardi’s gallery in Rome, the Studio d’Arte Palma. As evidenced by the
catalogue’s foreword, the gallery gave its guarantee on the provenance of the works on show.
14 They are a Crucifixion by Deodato Orlandi (cat. 2 of the 1946 exhibition), an Adoration of
the Magi by Maestro del Bambino Vispo (cat. 3), a resurrected Christ by Niccolò Alunno (cat.
5), the two works by Jacopo del Sellaio (cats. 7 and 8), a Madonna col Bambino and an infant
Saint John the Baptist by Giampetrino (cat. 12), an Adoration of the Magi by Jacopo Bassano
(cat. 16), and a painting of a scene from the life of Scipio Africanus by Giovanni Battista Tiepo-
lo (cat. 47). They all came from Italian private collections at the time, the majority from Rome.
15 On his first trip to South America, see his manuscript Amer (MASP, Research Center and
Library, Pietro Maria Bardi papers). His log diary was studied by Eugênia Gorini Esmeraldo at
the University of Campinas (Ph.D. dissertation) and a revaluation of this trip and his entire
biography has been undertaken in the research and essays published by Paolo Rusconi in the
last decade. See also Rifkind 2013 for Bardi’s defense of Rationalist architecture in Italy through
his magazine Quadrante (1933 –1936).
16 Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho (1898 –1977), better known by his nickname, Ciccillo, was
an Italian-Brazilian industrialist and businessman. Born into a family of Italian immigrants from
Castellabate (province of Salerno), he built his own company out of the corporate conglome-
rate created by his uncle, Count Francesco Matarazzo. The Matarazzos were the richest family
in South America in the first half of the twentieth century, and were pivotal in accelerating
Brazilian industrialization. The only biography ever published on his life as a patron of the arts
and businessman was commissioned by himself; see Almeida 1976.
17 See Pietro Maria Bardi’s telegram to Matarazzo’s secretary, Carlino Lovatelli, dated March
17, 1946 (MAC USP, Registrar’s Section, folder MAMSP-MAC). The acquisition of these works
will be tackled below, when we analyze MAM’s collection of Italian modern art.
18 This was the case with architect Marcello Piacentini (1881–1960), who actually seems to
have suggested Bardi for the job at COREITAL. Piacentini travelled to Brazil in 1934, whereupon
the Brazilian minister of education and health, Gustavo Capanema, selected him as first choice
in preparations for the master plan of the Universidade do Brasil (today known as Universidade
Federal do Rio de Janeiro). On Piacentini’s influence and projects in Brazil, see Tognon 1999.
Bardi was not the first Italian art critic and gallerist to bond with the upper
echelons of the Brazilian art world. Since the 1920s, and precisely in the context
of fascist Italy, there had been many initiatives, both from private actors and from
the Italian government, to promote Italian art and culture in South America.19
This was the case with art critic and journalist Margherita Grassini Sarfatti
(1880 –1961).20 Leader of the Novecento Italiano group in the 1920s, she first ar-
rived in South America in August 1930, with an exhibition on the Novecento
group that toured Buenos Aires, Rosario, and Montevideo.21 She spent fifteen
days in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and used every opportunity to disseminate
her ideas on art, giving many interviews to Brazilian newspapers and becoming
acclaimed by the Brazilian art world.22 She then came back to South America,
against her will, in 1939, settling first in Montevideo, and later in Buenos Aires,
where she lived until she helped Ciccillo Matarazzo purchase a collection of
modern Italian painting for the creation of MAM, before finally returning to
Italy in 1947. Although there is no evidence of any kind of collaboration or con-
nection between Bardi and Sarfatti, in their motherland they were both very
close to the fascist elite at different moments in time, and were aware of each
other’s activities.23 But in Brazil they seem to have come to some agreement, pre-
sumably when Matarazzo reached out to each of them separately for assistance in
acquiring modern Italian paintings for MAM’s collection. Moreover, new evi-
dence, detailed later, suggests that after Sarfatti’s return to Italy, she and Bardi
may have cooperated on nurturing Old Master collections in South America.
In regard to collecting Old Masters, Bardi and Sarfatti counted on the
support of a third party: the celebrated connoisseur and art historian Bernard
Berenson (1865 –1959). His relations to South America seemed to have strength-
ened once Argentine art critic and art historian Jorge Romero Brest asked his
permission to translate and publish his book Aesthetics and History.24 Berenson
19 Since the second half of the nineteenth century the Americas have been home to the
three largest communities of Italian immigrants outside Italy. New York, São Paulo, and Bue-
nos Aires are the cities with the largest Italian communities; see Trento 2008; Bertonha 2001.
As far as the art world is concerned, it is worth mentioning the tour, during the early fascist
period of the 1920s, of the Nave Italia (see Cecchini 2016) and the first visit of the leader of
the Futurist movement, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, to Brazil and Argentina in 1926 (see
Fabris 1993).
20 There are a number of important biographies on Sarfatti, mainly concentrating on her
role as a fascist ideologue. See Cannistraro / Sullivan 1993, the first comprehensive biography
on her. In 2015, journalist and art historian Rachele Ferrario published a biography that focuses
on her activities as an art critic and cultural figure; see Ferrario 2015. Even the recent exhibi
tion on her life as a major figure in the Italian art world (see Montaldo / Giacon 2018) contribu-
ted nothing new to the subject of her connections to South America.
21 For a fresh revaluation of the Novecento Italiano exhibition in the River Plate region, see
Cecchini 2020.
22 For an in-depth study of her relations with South America, see Magalhães 2016; Magal-
hães 2020 a.
23 It is worth noting that there was also a significant age difference between them: Sarfatti
was twenty years older than Bardi. Moreover, according to her biographers, Sarfatti started
falling out of Il Duce’s grace in 1930 –1931, the very time that Bardi was settling in Rome as di-
rector of the Galleria d’Arte di Roma and enjoying celebrity as an art critic. There is one piece
of evidence, still in Milan, which connects the two of them: a letter from gallerist Gino Ghi-
ringhelli (of Galleria Il Milione) to Pietro Maria Bardi, dated June 7, 1931 (Castello Sforzesco,
Biblioteca Trivulziana, Pietro Maria Bardi papers). In the document, Ghringhelli mentions her
in the context of an attempt by her group to organize an exhibition in his gallery.
24 See Berenson 1948. Here Berenson attempts to summarize his approach to studying art-
works, basing his concepts and ideas on his practice as connoisseur. One of the most import-
ant concepts he develops here is what he calls “life-enhancement,” or the ability of an artwork
to convey “[…] the ideated plunging into a state of being, or a state of mind, that makes one
feel more hopefully, more zestfully alive; living more intense, more radiant a life not only phy-
sically but morally and spiritually as well […]” (p. 150).
and Romero Brest were introduced to each other by Sarfatti in the winter of
1949, when Brest was visiting Italy with his wife.25 The Argentine art critic had
been one of Sarfatti’s main contacts during her time living in Buenos Aires and
acted as her editor for the book Espejo de la pintura actual, issued by his publish-
ing house in 1947.26
Berenson and Sarfatti, meanwhile, had been introduced to each other by a
mutual friend in April 1936.27 From then on, Sarfatti was a habitué of Villa I
Tatti, and kept a continuous correspondence with Berenson, interrupted only
during her exile in Argentina. Despite their disagreement when it came to the
appreciation of modern art, they engaged in a very rich debate on art in the
1950s. Moreover, Sarfatti seems to have taken an interest in Berenson’s field of
expertise in as early as 1935.28
Upon her return in Italy after her exile, Sarfatti immediately took up her
correspondence with Berenson again. In his answer to a letter or telegram from
her, on August 27, 1947 he writes: “Dearest Margherita. Pleased to hear from you
at last & to have your mail ad.”29 In the first fifteen days of September we see
them making arrangements to meet, with Sarfatti mentioning a Tintoretto exhi-
bition at San Rocco in Venice:
Dearest friend, the best of BBs.

Your letter which has just reached me has been the gladdest tiding I have
had for a week of Sundays of course, delighted to meet you anywhere, in
Milan, Florence, or, why not? here in Venice now, when, & how? Have you seen
the Tintoretto exhibition here at San Rocco? [my italics]
[…]
P. S. I wonder if you really know how world-wide your name & fame has
spread. If you do realize it you are wonderful not to have grown awfully
conceited. Nobody, in South America, says: mai sentito nominare of B.B. [my
italics] […]30
The letter clearly connects South America and the theme of Old Masters as a
common interest between them and suggests that there might have been at least
an attempt to collaborate in their capacity as connoisseurs and art dealers for
new collectors in South America. True, such a partnership may not be docu-
mented in writing, but their further contribution to the magazine Brest had re-
cently founded in Buenos Aires in 1948 suggests otherwise.
25 See letter from Margherita Sarfatti to Bernard Berenson, dated January 18, 1949 (Villa
I Tatti – Harvard University, Settignano, Bernard Berenson papers). For a specific analysis of
the reception of Berenson’s book in Argentine art circles, see Magalhães 2020 b.
26 See Sarfatti 1947.
27 See Chierichini 2013.
28 See her personal notebook, Quaderno X, pp. 47 – 67 (MART, Rovereto, Archivio del ‘900,
Margherita Sarfatti papers). The book is a record of her notes while visiting the major Titian
exhibition that took place at Palazzo Ca’ Pesaro in Venice in 1935, which seems to have inaugu-
rated a series of exhibitions on Italian Renaissance painters establishing the first corpus of
works attributed to them; see Barbantini 1935. In her notes, Sarfatti discusses some of the
attributions made by Berenson in his Venetian Painters of the Renaissance (Berenson 1894).
29 See letter from Bernard Berenson to Margherita Sarfatti, dated August 27, 1947 (MART,
Rovereto, Archivio del ‘900, Margherita Sarfatti papers).
30 See letter from Margherita to Bernard Berenson, dated September 14, 1947 (Villa I Tatti –
Harvard University, Settignano, Bernard Berenson papers). The phrase in Italian is in the origi-
nal. The Tintoretto exhibition at San Rocco she is referring to is the exhibition of the wall and
ceiling paintings in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, di San Giovanni Evangelista, and dei Car
mini by Tintoretto, Tiepolo, and Guardi respectively that opened to the public that year. See
Il Tintoretto, Tiepolo, Guardi 1947.
Titled Ver y Estimar, Brest’s magazine seems to have changed over time.31
Now better known as a space for debating modern art, the first issues seem
broader in theme, relating much more closely to Brest’s professorship in the art
history program at the University of Buenos Aires. Essays on the Italian painters
of the Renaissance are thus quite common in the issues from 1948 to 1950. It is
in this context that Brest published a chapter (“Art History Specifically”) from
Berenson’s Aesthetics and History, translated into Spanish.32 The presentation of
Berenson’s chapter is followed by an essay penned by Alfredo Roland, where the
author discusses Berenson’s approach to aesthetics and art history.33 Before the
appearance of Berenson’s Aesthetics and History chapter in Brest’s magazine,
the Buenos-Aires-based Editorial Ateneo published Italian Painters of the Renais-
sance, translated into Spanish, in 1944.34 This was in the same year in which Sar-
fatti published, also in Buenos Aires, two monographs, on Giorgione and Titian
respectively.35 In the monograph on Giorgione, she dedicates a chapter to dis-
cussing Berenson’s methods of authenticating works of art.36
Although Sarfatti appeared in Brest’s magazine as a modern art critic re-
viewing contemporary exhibitions in Rome, she republished a prior article in
the issue of November 1949 on Giovanni Bellini.37 Her essay comments on a
monographic Bellini show that took place in Italy that year.38 But what is impor-
tant to point out here is that there was most likely an ulterior motive to self-
referencing the monographic books she had published during her years in
Buenos Aires, especially in regard to the title of her essay39 and the content, where
she not only comments on questions of attribution in Bellini’s oeuvre but also
mentions the latest connoisseurship on Venetian Old Masters. By introducing
Berenson to Brest in the winter of 1949 she presented him as the voice of author-
ity when speaking on the Old Masters, while preserving her realm of expertise in
modern art – a field in which Berenson had little interest and where she was his
equal, complementing his views on the history of the visual arts in Italy. It was a
mutually rewarding partnership in matters of dealing art, with each enjoying
their own niche.
A discussion of the practices of connoisseurship in European Old Masters
published for a South American readership in the shadow of the Second World
War would have seemed of remarkably marginal interest if it were not for the
fact that Bardi and Chateaubriand were at that moment building a collection of
European masters for São Paulo, while across the border in Buenos Aires another
famous patron of the arts, Torcuato di Tella (notably of Italian origin), was build-
ing his own collection of Old Master paintings.40 He had the help of Italian art
critic and historian Lionello Venturi (1885 –1961), in exile in the United States
31 On Brest and Ver y estimar, see Giunta / Costa 2005. The magazine was published in
two series, the first between 1948 and 1953, and the second between 1954 and 1955. The
digitized issues are available at URL: http: //revistasdeartelatinoamericano.org/collections/
show/5 (accessed 30.11.2020).
32 See Berenson 1950.
33 See Roland 1950.
34 See Berenson 1944.
35 See Sarfatti 1944 a; Sarfatti 1944 b.
36 See Sarfatti 1944 a, chapter V: “El acertijo de las atribuciones,” p. 36.
37 See Sarfatti 1949.
38 See Pallucchini 1949. The exhibition took place from June 12 to October 5, 1949. A copy
of the catalogue can be found at MASP’s library. Bellini’s Willys Madonna, now in the muse-
um’s collection, appears in the show (see cat. 90, p. 158).
39 The title of the essay, “El sonriente y paciente Bellini” (The Smiling and Patient Bellini),
has the same character as the titles of her books on Titian and Giorgione, and seems to
emphasize subjective traits of the three artists – very much in alignment with her under
standing of Berenson’s connoisseurship, i. e., based on the “emotion of the works of art” (see
Sarfatti 1944 a).
during the war, to facilitate acquisitions for his collection.41 While in Italy, Ven-
turi and Berenson had met each other, in 1908, long before Mussolini’s rise to
power, and their paths would cross many times later in their work for art collec-
tors.42 Both enjoyed a degree of celebrity in Brazil in the 1950s.
Berenson’s fame in Brazil reached its peak during the presentation of the
MASP collection to the local press. The museum’s chairman, Assis Chateau
briand, owned the most widely read illustrated magazine in South America, O
Cruzeiro,43 which he used to promote the museum and raise publicity for the
luxurious receptions he organized in celebration of the arrival of Old Master
paintings in its collection. One of these receptions, marking the collection’s
‘homecoming’ after touring abroad, was to take place in the official residence of
the Brazilian presidency, the Palácio das Laranjeiras, in Rio de Janeiro in January
1957. The reporter on the feature, which, judging from the photographs, looked
much more like a high-society event, starts by mentioning Berenson:
It was Bernard Berenson who came up with “It” as an expression to define the
aesthetic fruition of the good and beautiful things in life and the universe. It is not
the “It” that Clara Bow discovered, a quarter of a century ago, the naïve and graceful
fixation that later came to be known as “sex appeal.” There is, though, a relationship
between them, for [Berenson’s] “It” is also attained through great explosions of
love. But sublime love in devotion and in sacrifice, or in aesthetic pleasure.44
Using the typical hyperbole of the popular press, and making comparisons
to pop culture, the reporter evokes Berenson’s ideas on the reception of great
works of art, which he had precisely systematized in his Aesthetics and History.45
Moreover, his name would continue to appear in the arguments Bardi and he
put forth surrounding the attribution of MASP’s Resurrection of Christ
(1499 –1502, oil on wood, 56.5 × 47 cm) to the young Raphael that had been
purchased for the museum’s collection during its tour in London, in 1954.46
Most of the Old Masters of uncertain attribution in MASP’s collection were
accompanied by a rich correspondence between Bardi and another Italian art
historian, Roberto Longhi.47 There are however at least two works that were
40 Torcuato di Tella (1892 –1948) was an Italian immigrant in Argentina, who made his fortune
manufacturing home appliances in partnership with US investors. He is known to have openly op-
posed fascism and was a patron of the arts in Argentina. Following his death in 1948, his son,
Guido di Tella, donated some of his Old Master paintings to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and
created the Centro de Artes Visuales – Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in 1958. The center was directed
by Jorge Romero Brest and became one of the most important venues of avant-garde art in the
country; see Giunta 2001. Giunta and other authors examining the Di Tella Collection have dedica-
ted their research to the institution’s role in fostering modern and contemporary art in the 1960s
and 1970s in Argentina. Its collection of Old Masters, by contrast, remains to be studied.
41 See Venturi / Brest 1965. The study of the collections had begun earlier, as attested by the
note on Venturi’s unfinished foreword to the catalogue (Venturi died in 1961).
42 On the relations between Berenson and Venturi, see Marinho 2020.
43 On the history of O Cruzeiro and its inspiration from magazines such as Life Magazine
and Paris Match, see Costa 2012.
44 Andrade 1957.
45 The “It” in the feature seems to popularize Berenson’s concept of “life-enhancement.”
46 See 103 dipinti del Museo d’Arte di San Paolo del Brasile 1954, p. 26 (cat. 6): “After
spending several years on the London antiquarian market and being attributed by Berenson to
a student of Perugino, the painting was recently purchased, with a report by Mario Modestini,
for the Museu de Arte de São Paulo and exhibited at the Tate Gallery as an unpublished work
by Raphael […]” [my translation]. Bardi would only pick up on Berenson’s mistake very late in
his life. In 1983 he raised the matter in at least two of his weekly reviews in the Brazilian maga-
zine Senhor; see Bardi 1983. The work, as attested by MASP’s documentation, was first offered
to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which followed Berenson’s guidance in not
recognizing it as an autograph work by the young Raphael; see Barone / Marques 1998.
47 See the exhibition of the Italian art collection organized by MASP in 2015 (Pedrosa / Esme-
raldo 2015), where some of the letters were exhibited alongside the artworks they referred to.
ossibly brokered for the museum’s collection with the involvement of Sarfatti
p 1 Jacopo Robusti alias Tintoretto,
and Berenson. These are the two paintings by Tintoretto. Their provenance re- Pietà (Lamentation over the Dead Christ),
veals the names of two collectors with direct ties to Sarfatti and Berenson. In the 1560 –1565, oil on canvas, 94.7 × 141 cm.
São Paulo, MASP (photo MASP – João
case of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ (Pietà), dated to 1560 –1565 (fig. 1),
Musa)
it was purchased for the museum directly from the collection of Count Alessan-
dro Contini Bonacossi in Florence, in 1947.48 The Ecce Homo, dated to 1546 –1547
(fig. 2), was purchased for MASP in 1949, directly from the collection of Carlo
Peroni of Rome.49 As far as Bonacossi is concerned, he was an important art deal-
er and collector in the 1930s and early 1940s, and was friends with both Sarfatti
and Berenson.50 A recent study shows he bought most of his artworks from col-
lections abroad and had direct ties with the US art market, where he seems to
have taken over Sir Joseph Duveen’s place as a transatlantic marchand after Du-
veen’s death in 1937.51 His main client in the United States was Samuel H. Kress,
whose collection was formed by at least 900 artworks bought from Bonacossi
48 See Marques 1998.

49 See Marques 1998.
50 Cannistraro and Sullivan were the first to document Sarfatti’s relationship with Contini
Bonacossi. See Cannistraro / Sullivan 1993, pp. 399 – 400. Regarding Berenson, the literature on
Contini Bonacossi’s collection attests that he, Lionello Venturi, and Roberto Longhi were close
to Bonacossi, and were from time to time called up to authenticate artworks that he bought
and sold to other private collectors. More recent information on the Contini Bonacossi collec-
tion can be found in the catalogue published by the Gallerie degli Uffizi. See Contini Bonacossi
2018.
51 See Toffali 2014 – 2015.
52 Information given at the introductory text of the Kress Foundation Archive. URL: http: //
www.kressfoundation.org/archive/finding_aid/default.htm (accessed 30.11.2020).
2 Jacopo Robusti alias Tintoretto, himself.52 Among Bardi’s papers in the Research Center and Library at MASP is
Ecce Homo, 1546 –1547, oil on canvas, a manuscript Bardi prepared for the general catalogue of the Kress Collection,
109 × 136 cm. São Paulo, MASP (photo but which was ultimately never published.53
MASP – João Musa)
The circumstances surrounding the sale of Tintoretto’s Lamentation were
controversial: Bonacossi faced trial from September 1944 to February 1947,
accused of having collaborated with the Nazis. According to Eva Toffali, our
Brazilian Lamentation appears in a list of forty-eight other classical paintings
which Contini Bonacossi claimed had been confiscated by Nazi troops from his
property, in Capezzana (Provincia di Prato in Tuscany).54 The works were found
in a storage site the Germans had in Alto Adige. They were safely returned to
Florence, initially under the custody of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives
division that Allied troops had established in Italy. During Contini Bonacossi’s
trial, custody of Tintoretto’s Lamentation passed to the local authorities, specifi-
cally the cultural office, and only in February 1947, when he was acquitted, was
Bonacossi able to (re)claim the works. During Bonacossi’s trial, Berenson was
summoned by the collector to give proof of his legitimate business. As Toffali
relates, the trial documents include a letter Berenson wrote to the authorities
confirming the legality of Contini Bonacossi’s art dealing activities.55 Toffali also
states that according to the documentation on the Contini Bonacossi Collection
that she had access to for her research, the works in it would have been (re)acces-
53 See Pietro Maria Bardi’s papers (MASP, Pietro Maria Bardi papers, folder 39). Bardi would
have dedicated his time to producing the catalogue of the Kress Collection in the early 1970s.
54 See Toffali 2018. Toffali also suggests that a work by Fra Galgario present in the list ended
up in Bardi’s collection.
55 See Toffali 2018, note 51: the letter dates from April 19, 1945.
sioned at least three times between 1947 and 1954, after returning to the collec-
tor. The MASP’s’ registrar’’s files state that the Lamentation was already sold to
the museum by Bonacossi already in 1947. But it nevertheless appears on the list
prepared by an official at the Soprintendenza di Belle Arti in Florence who paid
a visit to the count’s Villa Vittoria in 1955, upon his death, which lead Toffali to
put forth the hypothesis that MASP must have acquired Tintoretto’s Lamenta
tion after the count’s death, probably from his heirs.
Surprisingly, however, this is not confirmed by MASP’s documentation on
the work. In the registrar’s files, the first document on the Lamentation is a letter
of authentication, dated July 11, 1947, and signed by another eminent Italian art
historian, Pietro Toesca, who states that:
This canvas (1.40 × 0.945) by Jacopo Tintoretto is one of the most beautiful
and rare of the master’s youth: from him, it has the vigorous contrast of light
and dark values, yet tempered with the influence of Titian that brings to him
the delicate effects of composition, gestures, colors, without diminishing his
own individual talents and traits, which enables one to recognize his hand
in every single aspect. The quick and expressive touch of Tintoretto is every
where to be found; in the anxious lightness of the surface, in the contrast of
the tones, in the passages from lights to shadows one finds all his art.
What stands out is the composition of the figures in a myriad grading of
dynamic tones to a landscape in which Tintoretto finds, in competition
with Titian, total originality when passing from the hot and golden paints
of the group on the left to the silvery distances of the plane on the right.56
Still, according to the old accession file of the painting at MASP, besides Toesca,
there were two other documents produced in 1947 to attest the authorship of the
work as Tintoretto’s. In terms of bibliography, just one German reference attests
its publication as a Tintoretto before its shipment to Brazil.57
The authentication of Tintoretto’s Lamentation reverberated in the Brazil-
ian press as soon as the painting arrived on October 25, 1947.58 The famous São
Paulo modern art critic Sérgio Milliet (1898 –1966) used his art column at the
newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo to discuss the attribution to Tintoretto.59 At first
he questions the attribution, only to then confirm it as an autograph work by
Tintoretto, but by using his own arguments: He publishes two drawings that he
himself had drawn to compare the flow of the figure drawings in the Lamenta-
tion group on the left of the painting to that of the version in the collection of
the Accademia di Brera. Milliet’s article, together with another written by Bar-
di,60 is a clear confirmation that Tintoretto’s Lamentation was already in Brazil by
late 1947. The controversy over its attribution and provenance might well have
been the reason why it remained in Brazil in the 1950s while the other Old Mas-
56 Pietro Toesca’s manuscript note dated July 11, 1947 (MASP, Registrar’s Section, file for
Lamentation over the Dead Christ) [my translation]. It is worth pointing out that Toesca
speaks of a work from Tintoretto’s early period, despite the fact that it is dated to 1560 –1565.
57 The accession file only makes reference to Erich von der Bercken (Bercken 1942). A copy
of the volume can be found at MASP’s library.
58 This is the accession date of the Lamentation in the MASP collection, as recorded in the
old accession file.
59 See Milliet 1947.
60 See Bardi 1947. Here Bardi uses the von der Bercken catalogue to confirm the attribution
to Tintoretto. According to this author, MASP’s work would have been a preparatory version
for the lunette of the Lamentation now at the Pinacoteca di Brera. This was later dismissed by
Luiz Marques in the general catalogue of the Italian collection, published in 1998, see Marques
1998, pp. 87 – 89. Another article published by Bardi in as early as 1951 suggests that the paint
ing’s attribution was still under dispute; see Bardi 1951, where he reaffirms von der Bercken’s
reading of the work and its attribution to Tintoretto.
ters recently purchased for MASP’s collection toured Europe and the United
States. Even many years later, it did not travel when MASP did another touring
exhibition of its collection, which resulted in the two major catalogues edited by
Ettore Camesasca.61 Finally, in the 1978 edition of the Rizzoli L’opera completa di
Tintoretto, it is not even mentioned in the final list of works “mostly attributed”
to the Venetian painter.62
This is not the case with the other Tintoretto now belonging to MASP, Ecce
Homo, which arrived in the museum’s collection on March 5, 1949. According to
its accession file, it came from the Palazzo Ducale in Mantova, and its prior own-
er had been Carlo Peroni, a lawyer from Rome. The old accession file gives the
direct provenance of the work as coming from a private collection in Rome, but
without mentioning Carlo Peroni.
Peroni was a close friend of Sarfatti and her family,63 and when she fled Italy
in 1938, she left some suitcases of personal belongings at Peroni’s villa in Como,
where they were neighbors.64 He also sold two works from his collection of Ital-
ian modern art to Ciccillo Matarazzo, in a sale brokered by Sarfatti in 1946 –1947,
as will be discussed later. Although very little is known about him, recent re-
search into another private collector of the 1930s reveals that Peroni seems to
also have acted as an art dealer, and he was known as an important collector of
Italian modern art.65 He was not the only collector during the ventennio interest-
ed in purchasing both Italian Old Masters and Italian modern art: the most fa-
mous collection in Italy containing classical Italian painting and modern Italian
art was that of Riccardo Gualino, which had been built with the help of Bernard
Berenson and Lionello Venturi, albeit at different points in time.66 The same
collecting activity applied to the collection of Contini Bonacossi. Despite his
greater interest in the Old Masters, he became a collector of Italian modern art
in the 1930s. While establishing himself and his family in Villa Vittoria in Flor-
ence, Contini Bonacossi used the occasion of the I Quadriennale di Roma to
start a collection of modern Italian art. This was, to all intents and purposes, not
on view to visiting clients when they came to look at his Old Masters. The upper
floor of his Villa Vittoria – the more intimate part of the house – was renovated
by Giò Ponti, who created galleries specifically for the display of Bonacossi’s
newly acquired modern Italian art.67 There is no record available to check which
works he bought, and whether they were sold or kept by his heirs after his death.
Peroni and Bonacossi were part of a circle of collectors in Italy who had
grown their collections in the years of the fascist regime, when the country wit-
nessed the emergence of an established market for modern art and major private
collections of Italian modern art. This ran parallel to the Italian government’s
policy of promoting art from the peninsula, both modern and traditional, in ex-
hibitions abroad.68 Sarfatti and Bardi had parts to play in this development and
61 See Da Raffaello a Goya 1987. This was also a touring exhibition of the museum’s collec-
tion that took place between 1987 and 1989, with venues in Italy, Germany, and France.
62 See L’opera completa del Tintoretto 1978.
63 As stated by her granddaughter, Magali Sarfatti-Larson, in our conversation in New York,
March 2016.
64 As stated by her biographer, Brian Sullivan; see Cannistraro / Sullivan 1993, pp. 518 – 519.
65 The engineer and collector Alberto della Ragione, who also sold works from his collection
to Matarazzo in 1946 –1947. On his activities and his partnership with Carlo Peroni, see Toti
2017. According to Toti, Peroni was also in partnership with gallerist and collector Vittorio
Barbaroux in Milan, before acting in partnership with della Ragione.
66 On Riccardo Gualino and his collection, see Bava / Bertolino 2019.
67 See Contini Bonacossi 2018, p.44.
68 The fascist regime created strategies to associate Italian modern art with the period
of the Renaissance, as a way to reaffirm a specifically Italian identity, or as the fascists would
call it, the country’s italianità. This has been already tackled in some specific case studies; see
Haskell 2000; Braun 2005.
seem to have revived such strategies while acting as go-betweens in the founding
of MAM and MASP. Moreover, Berenson’s name frequently appears as the major
authority whenever Bardi faced the issue of expert authentication and quality
appraisal for works being purchased for MASP – even in cases when he ultimate-
ly opposed Berenson’s opinion, as with the museum’s Resurrection by Raphael. As
far as our two Tintorettos are concerned, Berenson and Sarfatti had access to
privileged information from the collectors involved. Although Bardi was an in-
sider in the network of connoisseurs and critics, there were certain things only
Berenson could have known: the fact that Berenson had been summoned to testi
fy on the legitimacy of Contini Bonacossi as an art dealer gave him direct access
to the list of works the collector claimed to have been confiscated by the Nazis.
Finally, even if one can only speculate on the direct involvement of Sarfatti
and Berenson in the Tintoretto acquisitions for MASP, it nevertheless helps to
make sense of their sustained presence in the South American art world through
various journalistic and scholarly pieces, and their repeated emphasis on connois-
seurship in the field of Italian Old Masters, at the very moment in the history of
the southern subcontinent when its elites suddenly became interested in building
collections of this kind. As per the latest historiographical research, there seems to
have been no effort to create a collection of Old Masters in either Brazil or Argen-
tina before 1945. The first half of the twentieth century did indeed see the rise of
many private collections, but they seem to have been much more geared toward
French academic art or Italian art of the nineteenth century.69 This means that the
collecting of Old Masters in South America started much later than in the United
States, only taking place in the aftermath of World War II and without the same
financial clout already enjoyed by US tycoons in the early decades of the twen
tieth century. The case study presented here suggests that this might have resulted
from an expansion of the art market toward the south in the Americas, a subject
that still needs in-depth and broader research. This moment would never repeat
itself, and the MASP collection remains one of a kind for the region.
A Collection of Novecento Italiano for the São Paulo MAM.70

Even before MAM was founded in July 1948, its chairman Francisco Matarazzo
Sobrinho took action to contact agents in Italy and France to facilitate purchases
of whole groups of works for the museum. Between September 1946 and July
1947, Margherita Sarfatti was hired by Matarazzo to broker the purchase of
seventy-one modern Italian paintings for the founding collection of MAM. The
creators of these artworks were widely recognized as the greatest Modernist mas-
ters in Italy in the preceding two decades and had been promoted by the fascist
regime, inside and outside the country, especially in the 1930s. They included
Amedeo Modigliani, Mario Sironi, Ardengo Soffici, Carlo Carrà, Arturo Tosi,
Massimo Campigli, Achille Funi, Felice Casorati, Filippo de Pisis, Gino Severini,
Giorgio de Chirico, and Giorgio Morandi among others. Modigliani, De Chirico,
Severini, Carrà, Morandi, and Soffici are still part of the international canon of
modern art, and their works can be found in the most celebrated collections of
modern art around the world. Others, like Tosi, Funi, and De Pisis seem to only
be relevant in the history of Italian modern art. As for Sironi, Campigli, and
Casorati, for instance, they did enjoy a place on the international stage during
69 One of the main publications to elucidate this collection profile, in the case of Argentina,
is that of María Isabel Baldasarre (Baldasarre 2006).
70 This part of the article is the partial result of the decade-long research on the artworks
mentioned, which now belong to the collections of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Uni-
versidade de São Paulo (MAC USP). MAC USP was created after the transfer of the collections
of MAM in 1962 –1963 to the University of São Paulo. For a deeper analysis of this episode and
an in-depth study of the collection of Italian modern art addressed here, see Magalhães 2016.
their lifetimes and were still widely appreciated outside It-
aly in the 1950s. However, little by little they have been
overlooked by international art criticism ever since.71 As
for the works chosen for MAM, they clearly express the
view of their authors and their role in the artistic debate in
the 1930s and 1940s. Many of them come from prestigious
collections of Italian modern art, while others were delib-
erately chosen to reflect such private collections in Italy.
Once in Brazil, the discrediting of these paintings
started very early, due more to the reputation of the dealers
involved in their purchase than to the quality of the paint-
ings themselves. The first broadside came from Belgian
critic Léon Dégand (1907 –1958), acting as MAM’s found-
ing director:
[A]rtistically, it [MAM] had Italian paintings that

atarazzo had purchased in Italy the year before – the
M
worst products of the most illustrious names [my italics],
with the exception of Modigliani’s self-portrait – those
that he had bought with the help of Alberto Magnelli
in Paris – very good paintings of the École de Paris –
and a bunch of paintings, often very mediocre, that
Matarazzo had purchased occasionally from the worst
Brazilian painters.72
Dégand spares Modigliani’s Autoritratto (or Self-Portrait,

1919, oil on canvas, 100 × 64.5 cm, fig. 3), but emphasizes
his negative view of the other paintings by saying that:
“While visiting Italy, he [Matarazzo] purchased with the
help of who knows who [my italics] a collection of Italian
paintings of the contemporary school. After that, in Paris, I
found him ready to start the exhibition activities of the
3 Amedeo Modigliani, Autoritratto ( Self- museum with an exhibition of abstract art.” He clearly suggests that the paintings
portrait), 1919, oil on canvas, 100 × 64.5 cm. had been selected indiscriminately, despite the big names behind them. One
São Paulo, MAC USP (photo MAC USP – might say that Dégand’s criticism was purely a result of his defense of abstrac-
Nelson Kon)
tion. However, our research shows that his attacks on the collection went beyond
personal aesthetic taste. His judgment of such Italian paintings must be inter-
preted in the light of the heated debates that gripped European intellectuals
concerning the role that art and culture had played in totalitarianism’s expan-
sion on the continent in the interwar years – a debate led by the communist
parties of Western Europe, of which many figures from the French and Italian art
world were members or sympathizers. Fascist Italy had created powerful in
struments of propaganda in art and culture.73 It had supported intellectual and
71 Mario Sironi seems to be the most extreme case in this regard, due to his direct links to
fascist Italy. He can be considered the official painter of the fascist regime, as he was com
missioned with numerous major cultural and architectural projects, especially in the 1930s.
This was the case of the new building and decorations for the Triennale in Milan. His mural
paintings covered large facades of fascist-era official buildings, most of them systematically
destroyed in the aftermath of World War II, with Milan’s Palace of Justice being one of the few
still remaining; see Pontiggia 2015.
72 My translation from the French. See Léon Dégand, “Un critique d’art en Amérique du
Sud,” ca. 1949, pp. 7 – 8 (Centre National Georges Pompidou, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Paris,
Léon Dégand papers). This text is understood to be a draft for an article Dégand was presu-
mably asked to write on his experiences in Brazil, never to be published.
73 For an approach of such initiatives from a critical and historical point of view, see Lazzaro /
Crum 2005.
artistic activities, the organization of art exhibitions, both inside and outside
Italy. Moreover, it had fostered the collecting of Italian modern art by private
collectors, making use of mass communication (radio, cinema, newspapers, illus-
trated magazines) to disseminate the regime’s ideas on art and culture. Dégand
found himself in the midst of this political arena. Before his arrival in Brazil, he
had served on the selection committee of the art gallery of the Italian embassy in
Paris, working side by side with painter Gino Severini as one of his colleagues.74
At that moment in time, Italian diplomatic staff were adapting the discourse
surrounding their cultural and foreign affairs to reconnect with the victorious
Allied nations, in the hope of possible redemption in foreign policy circles, espe-
cially in the context of the League of Nations (soon to be rebooted as the United
Nations). Dégand was thus very much aware of the interceding agents behind
Matarazzo’s purchases in Italy. Margherita Sarfatti was in particular someone he
knew to be a fascist ideologue and ‘grande dame’ of the ventennio in Italy.
While not in Italy, Sarfatti engaged her son-in-law, Livio Gaetani d’Aragona,
to facilitate Matarazzo’s purchases for MAM’s collection. An ex-senator of the
fascist era and heir to one of the most prestigious noble families of Naples, Livio
Gaetani had a brother living in São Paulo.75 However, there is evidence that Sar-
fatti (through her son-in-law) was not the only agent. Livio Gaetani had a pre
decessor, the Venetian Enrico Salvatore Vendramini, whose name appears in a
series of telegrams sent by Matarazzo’s secretary, Carlino Lovatelli, to Pietro
Maria Bardi from as early as March 1946. From March to July 1946, Matarazzo’s
main contact in Italy was Bardi and his Studio d’Arte Palma.76 In any case, Bardi
and Enrico Salvatore Vendramini were soon to be replaced by Sarfatti and her
son-in-law. This replacement took place after Sarfatti’s visit to São Paulo, in June
1946. In a letter to her old American friend, Nicholas Murray Butler (then presi-
dent of the University of Columbia and former ambassador of the United States
to Italy), she writes:
June 18, 1946

Dear Friend:
I am here on a journey which I meant to be only a short trip, but circum-
stances are retaining me here, good ones, I am glad to say, for I found here
many friends and relatives, and some good hope of a permanent future job
for my sun in law [sic.], which might permit my daughter and family to
come over to this hopeful continent out of poor Europe and Italy.77
74 See Pane 2014. Pane’s analysis focuses on the remodelling of the state apparatuses
post-World War II. She demonstrates how after 1945 they switched to a new policy, as part of
the redemocratization of Italy that at the same time attempted to erase any trace of fascism in
the country.
75 Felice Gaetani, who had established himself in São Paulo as an antiquarian.
76 There is no document proving any transactional relationship between Bardi and Vendrami-
ni, but the connection can be hypothesized for two reasons. Firstly, because despite Matarazzo’s
contact with Studio d’Arte Palma, it is Enrico Salvatore Vendramini who answers his letters and
is in charge of making the first direct purchases. And secondly, at the MAC USP Archive – MAMSP
Fond we have located an empty folder with the following label of identification: “Quadros Bardi
(Caetano Salvatori) (1946 –1948) (da metalúrgica)” (Bardi Paintings [Caetano Salvatori]
[1946 –1948] [from the steelworks]). The steelworks mentioned is Matarazzo’s company, Me-
talúrgica Matarazzo. The “Caetano Salvatori” in brackets alludes to both the names of Enrico
Salvatori and Livio Gaetani (sometimes mentioned as Caetano or Caetani).
77 Letter from Margherita Sarfatti to Nicholas Murray Butler, dated June 18, 1946, written on
the commercial paper of Hotel São Paulo, Praça das Bandeiras (Columbia University Archives,
Butler Library, Carnegie Endowment, box 127, n. 3447). I would like to thank historian Brian
Sullivan for sending me a copy of this document, which he found while doing his research for
Sarfatti’s biography, published in co-authorship with Philip Cannistraro in 1993. In addition to
this, in Margherita Sarfatti’s papers, there is an exchange of letters between herself and her
The job mentioned here was the post of Matarazzo’s agent in Italy purchasing
paintings for MAM. In the first acquisitions made on behalf of MAM, Vendra-
mini acted as Matarazzo’s agent, via Bardi, until August 1946 when a telegram
confirming the shipment of the works he had bought for Matarazzo at Genoa’s
harbor appears to mark the conclusion to his services.78
There are other clues that may help us reconstruct the way Sarfatti, Livio
Gaetani, and Matarazzo settled their agreement for Gaetani to start purchasing
works in Sarfatti’s absence. The fact that Sarfatti was not in Italy made it difficult
for her to choose specific works. However, two things might have helped her over-
come these constraints. First of all, both her biographers and her granddaughters
contend that Fiammetta’s attachment to her mother bordered on idolatry. Fiam-
metta Gaetani (née Sarfatti) was known to accompany her mother to various so-
cial events, particularly when visiting exhibitions and galleries. She can be seen as
a qualified and trusted proxy acting on her mother’s behalf in looking for paint-
ings that she knew would have pleased her taste. In addition to this comes the fact
that it was Sarfatti who still had the final say, as is made clear from the exchange
of telegrams between mother and daughter during the acquisition process.79 It is
also likely that they made use of another element to overcome their separation:
photography. In addition to Sarfatti’s bulging photography folders as a journalist
and art critic,80 we know that Fiammetta and Livio Gaetani had gallerists send
them photographs of the paintings under consideration for purchase.81
Another group of photographs suggests that Sarfatti might also have been
asked to give her opinion on purchases that the painter Alberto Magnelli (1881–
1971) was making in Paris at the same time.82 Magnelli, in turn, was a point of
daughter, Fiammetta (Livio Gaetani’s wife), where they share their concern with Livio Gaetani’s
situation and their family’s fate in Italy. As a senator of fascist Italy and aide to the last president
(Dino Grandi) of the Fascist Council (Gran Consiglio del Fascismo) before the Nazi occupation
in 1943, Gaetani was summoned by the Commissione di Epurazione, or “Political Purging Com-
mission.” The years 1945 and 1946 were very difficult for him and his family, as his connections
with fascist authorities resulted in him being stripped of his diploma and his job. See also letters
from Livio Gaetani to Margherita Sarfatti, dated July 2 and July 5, 1944, and the letter from
Margherita Sarfatti to Fiammetta Gaetani, dated January 25, 1945 (MART, Archivio del ‘900,
Margherita Sarfatti papers). In them, Sarfatti, Livio, and Fiammetta talk about the possibility of
their emigrating to Brazil, where Livio could turn over a new leaf as an agricultural engineer.
78 As per the telegram sent by customs agent Maurizio Morris to Francisco Matarazzo
Sobrinho (Ciccillo Matarazzo), Genoa, dated August 3, 1946 (MAC USP, Registrar’s Section).
79 Although the telegrams themselves cannot be found, in Margherita Sarfatti’s papers in
Rovereto there are masses of receipts that attest to the frequency of their contact. Fiammetta
opened an account at the Italcable cable company just to be able to communicate about the
acquisitions. The receipts date from December 1946 to June 1947 and record the payments
Fiammetta made for Italcable’s services.
80 When Sarfatti fled to South America, she took them with her, as Brian Sullivan argues
based on an interview he did with Pietro Foá, son of Carlo and Isa Foá, who also emigrated to
Brazil in 1938, after the introduction of the leggi razziali or “racial laws” in Italy. Carlo Foá, a
prominent physiologist, was professor at the University of Turin and found a job at the Univer-
sity of São Paulo after arriving in Brazil. His wife, Isa Foá, was Sarfatti’s niece and her secretary
in the offices of the magazine Gerarchia. Four such folders can be found today in Margherita
Sarfatti’s papers (MART, Archivio del ‘900, Margherita Sarfatti papers).
81 This is the case of an envelope found in Sarfatti’s papers addressed to Fiammetta and
Livio from the Galleria delle Carrozze, containing photographs of works by Filippo de Pisis.
Another envelope, from the Galleria Il Milione, contains the photograph of a work by Virgilio
Guidi (MART, Archivio del ‘900, Margherita Sarfatti papers, Fotografie, 933 Sar.5.3.2.8).
82 At the same time that Sarfatti and her son-in-law were acting as Matarazzo’s agents in
Italy, Magnelli was buying works of art for MAM in Paris. Magnelli’s purchases on behalf of MAM
included thirty-two works by artists related to the French abstract groups of the 1930s, a work
by Wassily Kandinsky, a work by Pablo Picasso, and some paintings by what is dubbed the
“Second School of Paris.” See the exhibition Daniel Abadie curated at MAC USP in 2010
(Abadie 2010), which also assessed Magnelli’s involvement in Matarazzo’s purchases for MAM.
4 Achille Funi, L’indovina (The fortune-
teller), 1924, oil on wood, 45.7 × 45.8 cm.
São Paulo, MAC USP (photo MAC USP –
Rômulo Fialdini)
contact between young Italian painters experimenting with abstraction and the
French artist groups Abstraction-Création and Cercle et Carré. Such photographs
are of works that were not Sarfatti’s personal choice. Their exceptional status with-
in the collection may be precisely because they do not reflect Sarfatti’s taste.83
Of the paintings purchased by Matarazzo, there are certain artists whose
careers Sarfatti did not follow, leaving her unable to appraise what to buy. In
such cases, both the appraisals of her gallerist friends and even of Bardi himself
might have come in handy. One specific case is that of Galleria della Spiga e di
Corrente, located in Milan. The gallery was founded in 1941, with the backing of
collector Alberto della Ragione, to support a group of young artists – the Cor-
rente di Vita Giovanile – formed of Renato Birolli, Giuseppe Santomaso, Aligi
Sassu, and others. They had initiated the group to reconnect with avant-garde
trends, mainly in France. The gallery was located in the same venue where in
1940 the same artists had founded the Bottega di Corrente and devised anti-
fascist actions. The purchases made for Matarazzo from this group were a still life
by Giuseppe Santomaso, a battle scene with horses by Aligi Sassu, and a still life
by Renato Guttuso.84 Many purchases were made through the galleries Milano /
Barbaroux, Il Milione, and Gussoni, all of which were owned by old friends of
Sarfatti. She was on especially good terms with Vittorio Emmanuelle Barbaroux
(1901–1954).85 In 1927, when he married the daughter of Count Gaspari Gussoni
(a well-known collector of Italian painting of the ottocento), Barbaroux went into
83 There are two envelopes containing photographs of works by Wassily Kandinsky and by
Alberto Magnelli himself.
84 Sassu’s work was one of the three paintings purchased for Matarazzo that came from
Carlo Peroni’s private collection, while Guttuso’s still life came from the collection of Alberto
della Ragione himself.
business with his father-in-law, supporting the artists of Sarfatti’s Novecento
Italiano group through Galleria Gussoni. In 1931, after the death of his father-in-
law, Barbaroux renamed the gallery “Milano,” and in 1938 changed its name
again, this time to Galleria Barbaroux. Sarfatti and Barbaroux mainly collaborat-
ed on exhibitions of Italian modern art abroad, in which the gallery offered its
support through the generous loan of artworks. Barbaroux reappears in South
America in 1947, when he brought his own private collection of Italian modern
art to be exhibited at Galería Müller in Buenos Aires.86
Barbaroux’s connection with Sarfatti’s Novecento Italiano is explicit in
Achille Funi’s L’indovina (or The Fortune-Teller, 1924, oil on canvas, 45.7 × 45.8 cm,
fig. 4), purchased for Matarazzo. Bought at Galleria Il Milione, it was first regis-
tered at Galleria Milano in 1933.87 This painting dates to Funi’s so-called Magic
Realism period and to the exhibition that he and five other painters had in the
early 1920s, and which gave rise to the Novecento group, with Sarfatti as its
leader. L’indovina is strikingly different from Funi’s work of the 1930s that reso-
nated with other private collectors of the period but which Sarfatti did not like.
The same connection with the Novecento Italiano can be seen in the paint-
ings by Arturo Tosi, purchased in the galleries Gussoni and Il Milione. The still
life now in the collections of MAC USP, was first exhibited at the I Quadriennale
di Roma, and is a typical example of Tosi’s “Cézannism,” much appreciated by
Sarfatti. The monograph on the artist’s work published by the French editors of
Les Chroniques du Jour, with an essay by critic Waldemar George, features a still
life by Tosi then in Sarfatti’s collection, which is certainly very similar to the
painting bought for Matarazzo.88 The same publication also contains a reproduc-
tion of a Ponte di Zoagli very similar to the version now at MAC USP.89 Ponte di
Zoagli (or Bridge at Zoagli, 1937, oil on canvas, 70 × 90 cm) was bought for Mata-
razzo and shown in Brazil for the first time at the Italian pavilion organized for
the major exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of immigration in the state
of São Paulo, in 1937.90 It also serves as another example of the use of photogra-
phy in selecting paintings to be purchased for Matarazzo, as it appears in repro-
duced form in Sarfatti’s Espejo de la pintura actual.91
Another important element proving Sarfatti’s direct intervention is found
in the correspondence between Arturo Tosi and the Venetian gallerist Carlo Car-
dazzo (1908 –1963).92 Although the first letter in which Tosi mentions the Brazilian
85 About the history of this and other Milanese galleries in the interwar period, see P ontiggia /
Colombo 2004; Pontiggia / Colombo / Gian Ferrari 2003.
86 See Artistas italianos de hoy 1947. As in the case of the exhibition of the Novecento
Italiano group in 1930, the works went on sale to local collectors.
87 As per the gallery label on the back of the painting, displaying the inventory number of the
work at Milano and its date of accession: June 30, 1933, n. 13. This was when the gallery orga-
nized a solo exhibition of Funi’s works, although L’indovina was not on show; see Magalhães
2011.
88 See George 1933.
89 The work was presented in an exhibition of Italian modern art at the Glaspalast in Munich
in 1931, and was destroyed, along with other works, in the fire that consumed the building
during the show.
90 See Esposizione commemorativa 1937. Although the painting is not reproduced in the
catalogue, documentation proving its display on the occasion in 1937 was confirmed by the
research Dúnia Roquetti Saroute did on Tosi’s works in the MAC USP collections for her MA
thesis in 2014, and by documentation found in Arturo Tosi’s papers. URL: https://teses.usp.br/
teses/disponiveis/93/93131/tde-16032016-173305/publico/2015_DuniaRoquettiSaroute_
VOrig.pdf (accessed 30.11.2020).
91 See Sarfatti 1947, p. 80.
92 The letters between Tosi and Cardazzo were located at the Archivio del Cavallino (L’archi-
vio della Galleria del Cavallino alla Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Carlo Cardazzo papers). I thank his
granddaughter Angelica Cardazzo for receiving me in June 2014 and granting me access to her
grandfather’s papers.
a cquisitions to Cardazzo is undated, it can be securely dated to late August 1946, as
he mentions the month and speaks of Fiammetta and Livio Gaetani:
Dear Cardazzo,
After your letter of August 23rd, I haven’t received any other news on the
show – When did you close it? […]
[T]hey talked confusedly to me about the paintings to send to Brazil –
What’s with all this? They ask for a beautiful still life for a museum – Are
those measuring 70 × 90 still available?
Please let me know quickly, as it is very important.
What follows is a letter from Cardazzo to Tosi, dated September 26, 1946, in
which the gallerist speaks of Livio Gaetani’s visit to his gallery:
Dear Tosi,
Count Gaetani came to the gallery to see the paintings, the still life pleased
him, but he is not sure about the landscape. He asked me to keep the paint
ings here in Venice for the moment, and as soon as he speaks to his wife he
will give me an answer.
As for the price, it’s ok. As soon as I hear from him, I’ll write to you.
In Tosi’s answer, he insists on the sale of a still life and a landscape:
Sept 27
Dear Cardazzo,
[…]
I received your letter yesterday and thank you for the information –
So this is what it’s all about: Countess Gaetani bought various things in Milan
for an Argentine gallery (she also bought one of my Zoagli paintings). Now
she would like two other important paintings from me – I thought about the
still life with a watermelon in the center and peaches on the left and slices of
watermelon on the right, and the village that was exhibited at Colomba – […]
5 Arturo Tosi, Paesaggio di Val Seriana

(Landscape of Val Seriana), 1940, oil on
canvas, 49.4 × 59.6 cm. São Paulo, MAC USP
(photo MAC USP – Rômulo Fialdini)
Although Tosi mentions “an Argentine gallery,” he is
in fact talking about the purchases for Matarazzo; his
“Zoagli” refers to the Ponte di Zoagli that the Gaetanis had
bought at the Galleria Il Milione. He still suggests the
choice of a still life and a landscape, which he asks Cardaz-
zo to send to his Milanese gallery (Galleria del Naviglio)
and to contact Fiammetta Gaetani to close the deal. These
letters and the receipts of the purchase suggest that the
negotiations resulted in the acquisition of Paesaggio di
Val Seriana (or Landscape of Val Seriana, ca. 1940, oil on
canvas, 49.4 × 59.6 cm, fig. 5).
In addition to this, the correspondence between Car-
dazzo and Tosi confirms two important things: Fiammetta
and Livio visited the galleries to negotiate and make the
purchases for a museum in Brazil, as mentioned in Tosi’s
first letter (“They ask for a beautiful still life for a muse-
um”). That the purchases were being made for a Brazilian
museum reappears in the correspondence between Livio
Gaetani and the artists Felice Casorati and Mario Sironi,
who sold the following works to Matarazzo respectively:
Testa nell’armatura or Testa e cimiero (or Head in Armor,
1946, oil on canvas, 73.1 × 54.8 cm, fig. 6), Invocazione (or
Invocation, 1946, gouache on paper, glued on wood, 87.5 ×
96.2 cm), and Paesaggio (or Landscape, 1947, oil on canvas
on wood, 53.9 × 74.2 cm). Finally, both artists make clear
their intention to sell the works for a special price as Mar-
gherita Sarfatti is acting as agent.93
6 Felice Casorati, Testa nell’armatura or However, only forty-three of the seventy-one paintings purchased for MAM
Testa e cimiero (Head in Armor), 1946, oil are clearly documented. These were the ones bought from Milanese galleries (in
on canvas, 73.1 × 54.8 cm. São Paulo, MAC addition to those bought by Enrico Salvatore Vendramini), the works acquired
USP (photo MAC USP – Rômulo Fialdini)
directly from artists, and those from private collectors. The other twenty-eight
are now under investigation, as the only thing mentioned in the accession files is
that they were bought in Rome, but without any date or precise documentation
on their provenance. Among these are Bagnanti in Piscina (or Bathers in a Swim
ming Pool, 1930, oil on canvas, 119 × 80 cm, fig. 7) by Giuseppe Capogrossi, three
paintings by Fausto Pirandello, three paintings by Giorgio de Chirico, one
Morandi, one Sironi, the two paintings by Corrado Cagli, and a still life by Mario
Mafai. These artists (especially Mafai and Cagli) seem to reflect something of the
style of the Scuola Romana in the 1930s, while some other young artists, like
Fausto Pirandello, display anti-Novecento trends. This circle of artists were con-
nected with two galleries in Rome in the 1930s. On the one hand, some of them
first showed in the Galleria d’Arte di Roma, under Bardi’s direction from 1930.
On the other, they were all promoted by the Galleria della Cometa (also in
Rome), which was particularly busy between 1935 and 1937.94 Sponsored by
Mimi Pecci-Blunt, the gallery’s program was coordinated by writer and art
critic Libero de Libero, although its real artistic mastermind was artist Corrado
Cagli. In 1937, the Galleria della Cometa opened a venue in New York, which
93 This is corroborated by the receipts signed by Casorati and by Sironi, which can be found
in the documentation of the works (MAC USP, Registrar’s Section). Casorati’s receipt dated
October 23, 1946, reads: “To Count Livio Gaetani, I hereby declare that I received 55,000 lire
for my painting ‘Testa nell’armatura.’ I am thus pleased to have sold this painting for an excep-
tional price, it being destined to a museum, and to have pleased Signora Margherita Sarfatti, to
whom I remain devotedly affectionate” [my translation].
94 On the Galleria della Cometa, see Cavazzi 1991; Libero de Libero 2014.
organized exhibitions of these artists’ work, until it was closed down (both in 7 Giuseppe Capogrossi, Bagnanti in
New York and Rome) in 1938. Because of Cagli’s and Pecci-Blunt husband’s Jew- piscina (Bathers in a swimming pool), 1931,
ish origins, the gallery was impacted by the newly introduced racial laws. It must oil on canvas, 119 × 80 cm. São Paulo, MAC
be pointed out that Bardi had close ties with the gallery, especially due to his
direct collaboration with writer and critic Massimo Bontempelli – Cagli’s uncle 8 Ottone Rosai, Il bottegone (The
and a major contributor to the gallery’s publications and exhibitions.95 tavern), 1932, oil on canvas, 70.3 × 55.6 cm.
In any case, what most of the paintings purchased for MAM have in com- São Paulo, MAC USP (photo MAC USP –
Rômulo Fialdini)
mon is their provenance from the collections of Italian private collectors who
were key in promoting Italian modern art, inside and outside Italy, in the 1930s
and early 1940s. Such collections were fostered by a state policy that was created
in the second half of the 1930s through a system of exhibitions and awards. Col-
lections such as that of gallerist Carlo Cardazzo and others like Rino Valdameri,
Alberto della R agione, and others are represented in the Matarazzo purchases
through very special works of art.
The purchases started with the acquisition of the eight works Enrico Salva-
tore Vendramini secured for Matarazzo, seven of which first belonged to Carlo
Cardazzo and his collection. In the late 1920s, Cardazzo had started his activities
in the art world as an editor of artist’s books in Venice. He emerged in a circle of
intellectuals and artists who met in an effort to foster a debate on modern art in
La Serenissima. Even though Venice played host to the Biennale, it lacked its
own collectors and galleries of modern art, and Cardazzo was pivotal in persuad-
ing the Venetian elite to adapt to modern tastes.96 He started his collection of
modern Italian art in the early 1930s, one of his first purchases being Osteria /
Il Bottegone (or The Tavern, 1932, oil on canvas, 70.3 × 55.6 cm, fig. 8) by Ottone
95 On Cagli and his connections with Bardi, see Bedarida 2018.

96 See Fantoni 1996; Carlo Cardazzo: una nuova visione 2008.
9 Gino Severini, Natura morta con piccione
(Still-life with pigeon), 1938, oil on
cardboard, 29.4 × 40.5 cm. São Paulo, MAC
Rosai, later bought for MAM. The prestige that his collection enjoyed resulted
from its presentation in two exhibitions in 1941, which led to him receiving an
award from the program for private collections promoted by the Ministry of
Education under minister Giuseppe Bottai (himself a private collector of mod-
ern Italian art).97 In April 1941, one hundred works from Cardazzo’s collection
were exhibited at the Galleria d’Arte di Roma, in the first of a series of exhibi-
tions dedicated to showcasing private collections of Italian modern art as part of
Bottai’s program at the Ministry of Education. In August, thirty works from Car-
dazzo’s collection were shown at the Mostra delle Collezioni d’Arte Contempo-
ranea in Cortina d’Ampezzo.98 The success of his collection prompted him to
create his own gallery. His subsequent Galleria del Cavallino was inaugurated on
April 25, 1942 and operated under his direction until 1945. He then left the ad-
ministration of the gallery to his brother, Renato, and opened a new gallery in
Milan, in 1946. This gallery, the Galleria del Naviglio, went on to have a central
role in disseminating Italian abstract art in the 1950s, especially in the United
States, thanks to his friendship with Peggy Guggenheim. Afro Basaldella, Giu
seppe Capogrossi, and Giuseppe Santomaso are some of the artists Galleria del
Naviglio promoted to American collectors. The gallery also became very cele-
brated for the important exhibitions it organized of foreign Modernist artists,
mainly those connected to the avant-garde of the first decades of the twentieth
century as well as young artists at the start of their careers.
In addition to Osteria / Il Bottegone by Ottone Rosai (exhibited in the two
shows of Cardazzo’s collection in 1941), paintings like Natura morta con piccione
(or Still Life with Dove, ca. 1938, oil on cardboard, 29.4 × 40.5 cm, fig. 9) by Gino
Severini, and Passeggiata delle amiche / Donne a passeggio (or Women Promenading,
1929, oil on canvas, 80.9 × 64.6 cm) by Massimo Campigli, are good examples of
what Italian collectors and Italian critics appreciated at the time.99 Campigli’s
97 See, for instance, Crespi 1941, for the review of the presentation of his collection at
Emporium.
98 See Giacon 2005. In this article, the author also makes a synthesis of Bottai’s policy at the
Ministry of Education in regard to his program for Italian modern art collections.
99 On the direct relationship between these private collections and art criticism of the
period, see Lacagnina 2014.
painting was shown as an example of the so-called “Italiani di Parigi” (Parisian 10 Ardengo Soffici, Natura morta con
Italians), and first belonged in the collection of Jeanne Bucher, in Paris, before ventaglio (Still-life with fan), 1915, tempera
Cardazzo purchased it.100 Gino Severini’s Natura morta con piccione alludes to oth- on paper on cardboard, 41.5 × 36 cm. São
Paulo, MAC USP (photo MAC USP – Rômulo
er still lifes he exhibited in the special room dedicated to him at the 1935 II Qua
Fialdini)
driennale di Roma, for which he was awarded the first prize in painting and which
marked his return to Rome. It also found its echo in other still lifes of his that 11 Carlo Carrà, Il lago (The lake), 1929,
appeared in the collection of Parisian gallerist Léonce Rosenberg, owner of one of oil on canvas, 69.2 × 89.2 cm. São Paulo,
the leading centers of modern art in the city, the Galerie l’Effort Moderne.101 MAC USP (photo MAC USP – Rômulo
Fialdini)
Another celebrated collector that appears in the provenance of the paintings
purchased for MAM is Alberto della Ragione (1892 –1973).102 Born in Genoa, and
educated as a naval engineer and businessman, della Ragione started his collec-
tion of Italian modern art after visiting the I Quadriennale di Roma in 1931. In
addition to this, he also first sponsored a gallery in Genoa, and later (as mentioned
above) sponsored the Corrente di Vita Giovanile group and founded the Galleria
della Spiga e di Corrente, in Milan. From his collection, Matarazzo purchased
Natura morta con ventaglio (or Still Life with Fan, 1915, tempera on paper, glued on
cardboard, 41.5 × 36 cm, fig. 10) by Ardengo Soffici, Il lago (or The Lake, 1929, oil
on canvas, 69.2 × 89.2 cm, fig. 11) by Carlo Carrà, Natura m orta con lume (or Still
Life with Lantern, 1940, oil on wood, 60.7 × 48.5 cm, fig. 12) by Renato Guttuso,
Oceano indiano by Scipione (1930, oil on canvas, 54.2 × 59.7 cm),103 and Amedeo
Modigliani’s famous self-portrait.104 Della Ragione’s collection also featured at the
1941 Mostra delle Collezioni d’Arte Contemporanea at Cortina d’Ampezzo.
100 Together with the other five paintings by the artist in the MAC USP collections, Campigli’s
Passeggiata delle amiche/Donne a passeggio is now the subject of post-doctoral study by
Renata Rocco at MAC USP.
101 On this and the other three paintings by Gino Severini in the MAC USP collections, see
Rocco 2013.
102 See Toti 2017.
103 In the correspondence undertaken by Palma Bucarelli and Alberto della Ragione for the
retrospective Bucarelli organized on Scipione’s work at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in
1954, the work is titled “Orango” by Bucarelli, and as “Mapa mundi con uccello esotico” by della
Ragione. The original title of the painting is actually I sognatori (The Dreamers). This is how the
artist submitted it to the selection committee for the exhibition on the animal in the arts, orga-
nized by Rome Zoo in 1930; see Prima mostra nazionale dell’animale 1930. Research into this
painting is still ongoing in preparation for an upcoming exhibition project at MAC USP.
12 Renato Guttuso, Natura morta con
lume (Still-life with lantern), 1940, oil on
wood, 60.7 × 48.5 cm. São Paulo, MAC USP
In Alberto della Ragione’s activities of buying and selling artworks, he seems

to have had another partner, Carlo Peroni (1911–1984). As mentioned before, in
addition to being a very good friend of the Sarfatti family, Peroni also sold a Tin-
toretto from his private collection to MASP. To Matarazzo, he sold Battaglia (or
Battle, 1938, oil on canvas, 40.3 × 40.3 cm) by Aligi Sassu, Paesaggio (or Landscape,
ca. 1935, oil on canvas, 34.3 × 42.8 cm, fig. 13) by Corrado Cagli, and I Pescatori (or
The Fishermen, 1925 –1929, oil on canvas, 108.8 × 89 cm, fig. 14) by Mario Sironi.105
Finally, the name of Rino Valdameri frequently appears in documents from
the time as a collector of Italian modern art. Piero Marussig’s La Maddalena (or
Mary Magdalene, 1929, oil on canvas, 89.3 × 72.2 cm, fig. 15) came from his collec-
104 This along with another three paintings by Amedeo Modigliani came to Italy through the
acquisitions that critic and art historian Lionello Venturi made on behalf of the collection of
Turin businessman Riccardo Gualino (1879 –1964), who was known to have one of the first
collections of Italian modern art in the country; see Bava / Bertolino 2019. About Modigliani’s
self-portrait, see Magalhães et al. 2019.
105 Very little is known about Carlo Peroni and his activities as a collector and, it also seems,
as a gallerist. About the works purchased for Matarazzo: Sironi’s painting together with six
other works by the artist in the MAC USP collection were the subject of the MA thesis of
Andrea Augusto Ronqui (see Ronqui 2017). After an in-depth analysis of the documentation
and after comparison with other works by the artist, Ronqui suggests a later date for I Pesca-
tori. As for the landscape by Corrado Cagli, it is very likely that the artist painted it during his
sojourn at Sarfatti’s summer villa at Lake Como, in 1935.
13 Corrado Cagli, Paesaggio (Landscape),
1936, oil on wood, 34.3 × 42.8 cm. São
Paulo, MAC USP (photo MAC USP – Rômulo
Fialdini)
tion, and had been exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1938 and in the show of his
collection organized by the Galleria d’Arte di Roma in 1942. Even less is known
about Valdameri,106 but the appearance of both his name and Peroni’s reflects the
impact of the government’s policy of fostering private collections such as theirs.
Despite the growth of a coterie of collectors and dealers of modern art throughout
the 1930s in Italy,107 there were very few art museums yet dedicated to collecting
Italian Modernism.108 In addition to this, fascist policies tended to favor supporting
private collections, something that cannot be seen as a specifically Italian solution,
but also prevailed in many other countries, indicative of how modern art became
mostly institutionalized through private enterprise and private patronage.
These collectors may also have served as models for Matarazzo. His engage-
ment with the project of a modern art museum for São Paulo came hand in hand
with many other cultural initiatives he sponsored in the same period.109 Like his
Italian counterparts, he seems to have set himself up as a public figure – certainly
106 See Caputo 2020.

107 See Salvagnini 2000.
108 Against this backdrop, it is worth mentioning the activities of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte
Moderna (GNAM) in Rome. Founded in 1883 and taking as its model the idea of a “museum of
living artists,” the GNAM was an important institution in the history of Italian modern art, but
only gained an international profile after World War II, under the directorship of Palma Bucarelli.
On her activities as GNAM director from 1942 to 1975, see Palma Bucarelli 2009.
109 While creating the São Paulo MAM, Matarazzo also started negotiations with the Venice
Biennale on the first participation of Brazil, in 1948 (but which only effectively happened in
1950); see Rocco 2018. Matarazzo also got involved in other cultural projects, such as the
creation of the Brazilian National Film Archives, inviting five Italian actors and directors to take
up temporary residency with a São Paulo theater company, and a museum of carved nativity
scenes; see Magalhães 2015.
110 Although the archive of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo holds the Ciccillo Matarazzo
papers, they are mainly composed of the documents he produced as chairman and as patron
of the institutions he created. There are no records of purchases for a private collection he
might have had. There is thus no evidence that Matarazzo collected art before he got involved
in MAM’s foundation, which might indicate that he became a collector for the sole purpose of
founding MAM.
14 Mario Sironi, I pescatori (The fisher- in the case of São Paulo – by backing a major project which the local elite could
men), 1924, oil on canvas, 108.8 × 89.4 cm. rally around as a means of reaffirming their leadership in the modernization of
São Paulo, MAC USP (photo MAC USP – the country. Also, like some of his Italian peers, Matarazzo seems to have become
Rômulo Fialdini)
an art collector primarily to support this project.110 In this sense, he had a strong
15 Piero Marussig, La Maddalena competitor in the chairman of MASP, Assis Chateaubriand, who also played a
(Mary Magdalene), 1929, oil on canvas, key role in Brazilian policy-making and the economy.111
89.3 × 72.2 cm. São Paulo, MAC USP
Classical Art, Modern Art, and Possible Collaborations between MASP and MAM
Although Brazilian historiography has tended to consider the activities of MASP
and MAM separately, while also highlighting their disputes over the primacy of
artistic debate on modern art in São Paulo, the case studies presented here tell a
different story.112 It is also important to consider that in the first years of these
111 As chairman of MASP, Assis Chateaubriand was nominated Brazilian ambassador to London
in the late 1950s after serving as a Brazilian senator. This corresponds to the moment when he
seems to have invested in creating Brazil’s ‘regional’ museums of modern art. Like Matarazzo, t here
is no evidence that he himself was an art collector. In the 1970s, though, his estranged son, Gilber-
to Chateaubriand, emerged as a very important collector of modern and contemporary art. His
private collection has been on permanent loan to the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro
ever since 1978, when a fire destroyed most of the works in the original museum collection.
112 The rivalry between the two museums is the subject of Marina Martin Barbosa’s Ph.D.
dissertation (Barbosa 2015), in which the author compares Ciccillo Matarazzo’s activities and
social behavior to that of Pietro Maria Bardi. It might have been more apt to instead compare
the public figures of Matarazzo and Assis Chateaubriand. Fernando Morais (Morais 1994) has
already pointed out the rivalries between these two businessmen due also to their political
ambitions. That MASP was engaging in a debate on modern art is made clear by Bardi’s exhibi-
tion and educational programs. See the exhibitions he organized of Alexander Calder (1948)
and of Max Bill (1951) at MASP, as well as the creation of the Instituto de Arte Contemporânea
(IAC). The IAC was open from 1947 to 1951 and is viewed as the first Brazilian project for a
school of industrial design in the country; see Leon 2013.
two museums they not only shared the same building but
also the same figures in their respective boards.113
One case in particular from the founding collection
of MAM clearly demonstrates the degree of collaboration
between the two museums: the purchase by Matarazzo of
the original plaster cast of Boccioni’s Forme uniche della
continuità nello spazio (or Unique Forms of Continuity in
Space, 1913, plaster, 119.7 × 89.9 × 39.9 cm, fig. 16). Bought in
1952, while Matarazzo was attending the Venice Biennale,
the negotiations between the heir of Filippo T ommaso Mari-
netti (his widow, artist Benedetta Cappa Marinetti), who
owned the work, and Brazilian representatives had already
started in December 1951, when Francesco Monotti (the di-
rector Bardi left in charge of his gallery in Rome) wrote to
Bardi about it.114 Although Assis Chateaubriand, also visit-
ing Europe, met Benedetta Cappa Marinetti in Rome in Jan-
uary 1952 to negotiate the purchase of Boccioni’s master-
piece in sculpture, his efforts were not successful: for it was
Matarazzo who managed to make the purchase, securing the
work for the collections of MAM.
While gathering a collection of Old Masters for MASP,
Bardi was also searching to collect modern art, as shown in
the many purchases he made between 1947 and 1952 of
works by Cézanne, Modigliani, Toulouse-Lautrec, Lipchitz,
Picasso, the Impressionists, and avant-garde artists. One
might even suggest that these works and those first acquired
for MAM are complementary, and together actually form a
consistent discourse on how modern art evolved, as told by
a certain strand of art criticism in Italy that, in the first half of the twentieth 16 Umberto Boccioni, Forme uniche della
century, aimed to a ssert itself as an alternative to the French-dominated n
arrative continuità nello spazio (Unique forms of
of modern art. continuity in space), 1913, plaster, 119.7 ×
89.9 × 39.9 cm. São Paulo, MAC USP (photo
In terms of art criticism in Brazil and the construction of a debate on the MAC USP – Elaine Maziero)
history and canonization of modern art, the French and Italian artistic circles
were the two main rival camps, with German Modernism playing a subordinate
role.115 The collections’ contents during this foundational stage of their history
thus also reflect the balance of criticism on modern art in Brazil at the time and
its direct connections with these two Latin European countries. Lastly, what also
113 The two museums were first located in an office building Matarazzo owned in the center
of São Paulo, part of which was rented to Assis Chateaubriand to house the offices of one of
his São Paulo newspapers. Moreover, Assis Chateaubriand was one of the members of the
committee that oversaw the creation of MAM, and in its early years, acted as a member of its
board of trustees. As for Matarazzo, he made important donations to MASP’s collection after
purchasing works explicitly for it. This is the case of a landscape by Gaetano Previati he donated
to the museum in 1949, see URL: https://masp.org.br/acervo/obra/paisagem-1 (accessed
30.11.2020).
114 A volume about the technical history and provenance of Boccioni’s work is under prepa-
ration by Edusp – Editora da Universidade de São Paulo (the USP press), in co-authorship with
British researcher Rosalind McKever and was the theme of an exhibition and international
conference at MAC USP in 2018. See “Boccioni: Continuity in Space,” curated by Ana Magal-
hães and Rosalind McKever. URL: http: //www.mac.usp.br/mac/expos/2018/boccioni/home.
htm (accessed 30.11.2020).
115 This can be attested by the interlocutors of very important art critics, such as Mário de
Andrade, who was in touch with celebrated art critics from France and Italy whenever they
came to São Paulo. This was the case in Blaise Cendrars’s first trip to Brazil, in 1924 (see
Amaral [1970] 1997), and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s first visit in 1926. It is also worth men-
tioning that the first generation of art critics in São Paulo, while being called “Futurists” were
emerges from the making of these collections with the Italian assistance detailed
above is the role they played in fostering a certain understanding of Italian
modern art that would help shape the legacy of the artists and groups of the
ventennio. This strategy was embedded in a discourse that celebrated Italian
Modernism as an updating of the Italian artistic tradition. Whereas the fascist
policies of italianità had made use of the notion of classical art (through quota-
tions of Roman and Renaissance art by modern artists), in the aftermath of
World War II, this discourse seems to have been turned into a search for a legiti-
mate artistic tradition that linked modern artists to Old Masters in Italy.116 This
argument is reflected in both Bardi’s project for MASP as an art museum, and in
Sarfatti revising her ideas on modern painting during the MAM acquisitions,117
albeit with slight differences.
Not being the work of Brazilian artists, the artworks discussed here have
always been considered as belonging outside the history of the arts in Brazil. For
scholars of a discipline that is relatively new and mainly occupied with research-
ing art by Brazilian artists, they did not seem to have a place in the narrative of
the arts in the country. Their sense of ‘misplacement’ has so far been perceived as
a nuisance, and they were for a long time overlooked by Brazilian art historians.
Nevertheless, by studying their provenance and the actors behind them, these
collective ‘nuisances’ in fact place Brazil in another light: in a moment in world
history when Brazil played an important role in the expansion of the art market
in the Americas in the aftermath of World War II. Finally, at a time when great
waves of immigrants were arriving in the country fleeing persecution or in search
of a new life, the fluidity of what might be defined as ‘Brazilian’ had a major
impact on the discourses surrounding such national projects as the founding of
modern art museums – something Brazilian Modernists had been involved in
ever since the first manifestations of ‘homegrown’ modern art in the country.
This process thus requires researchers to pose new questions and to address them
from an interdisciplinary and transnational perspective.
much more inclined to absorb such ideas through the writings of Ardengo Soffici and his acti-
vities in Lacerba magazine, rather than through Marinetti’s writings – which amounted to a
more realist/naturalist strand within the Futurist discussions of the late 1910s; see Fabris 1993;
and Chiarelli 2007.
116 This argument, for instance, is discussed by artist Corrado Cagli, contesting art criticism
in the United States that talked of a rupture, a break between Italian modern art and tradition,
while searching to dismiss the fascist decades of artistic production – in which Cagli had built
his career; see Bedarida 2018. In the same context, Cagli writes to Bardi, encouraging him to
abandon any project in South America and instead bank on US collectors – something which
Bardi seems to have ignored, as this was before he started making purchases for Matarazzo and
his trip to Brazil that resulted in him staying as MASP’s director.
117 Bardi’s ideas for MASP as an art museum are still to be studied in depth. In any case, in a
series of articles he wrote in the early 1950s for the magazine he cofounded in São Paulo,
Habitat, he explained what kind of art museum he had in mind for MASP. Here he makes it very
clear that he is deliberately avoiding qualifying any period of time in art history, by deciding on
the name of “São Paulo Museum of Art” – with one of the possibilities most discussed by him
being whether or not to include the adjective “modern.” He also disseminated his ideas in Italy;
see, for instance, Bardi 1953 –1954. As for Sarfatti, in her Espejo de la pintura actual (Sarfatti
1947), which was launched just after the end of the Matarazzo purchases for MAM, she re
affirms her beliefs in the connections between modern Italian painting and Renaissance art, in
what she calls an “art of synthesis” or “classicità moderna” (modern classicism). For an analy-
sis of her book with her Storia della pittura moderna, see Magalhães 2016, chapters 4 and 5.
Abbreviations Baldasarre 2006 Bercken 1942
María Isabel Baldasarre, Los dueños del Erich von der Bercken, Die Gemälde des
COREITAL arte. Coleccionismo y consumo cultural Jacopo Tintoretto, Munich 1942.
Comitato per le Relazioni Economiche en Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires 2006.
Italia America Latina Berenson 1894
Barbantini 1935 Bernard Berenson, The Venetian
MAC USP Nino Barbantini, La mostra di Tiziano. Painters of the Renaissance, London
Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Catalogo delle opere, Venice 1935. 1894.
Universidade de São Paulo
Barbosa 2015 Berenson 1944
MAM Marina Martin Barbosa, MASP e MAM: Bernard Berenson, Los pintores ita-
Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo percursos e movimentos culturais de lianos del Renacimiento, trans. Amelia I.
MART uma época (1947–1969), Ph.D. Diss., Bertarini, Buenos Aires 1944.
Museo di arte moderna e contempo IFCH UNICAMP, Campinas 2015.
Berenson 1948
ranea di Trento e Rovereto Bardi 1947 Bernard Berenson, Aesthetics and
MASP Pietro Maria Bardi, “O Tintoretto do History, London 1948.
Museu de Arte de São Paulo nosso museu,” Diário de São Paulo,
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Bernard Berenson, “Que és la história
Bardi 1951 del arte”, trans. Aurora Bernárdes,
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Ana Gonçalves Magalhães The Italian Art World and

São Paulo Museum Collections in the

RJBH Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 44 | 2019/ 2020

The Italian Artworks at MASP: The Tintorettos and the Activities of

12 See Pozzoli 2013.

Dearest friend, the best of BBs.

48 See Marques 1998.

A Collection of Novecento Italiano for the São Paulo MAM.70

[A]rtistically, it [MAM] had Italian paintings that

Dégand spares Modigliani’s Autoritratto (or Self-Portrait,

June 18, 1946

In Tosi’s answer, he insists on the sale of a still life and a landscape:

5 Arturo Tosi, Paesaggio di Val Seriana

95 On Cagli and his connections with Bardi, see Bedarida 2018.

In Alberto della Ragione’s activities of buying and selling artworks, he seems

106 See Caputo 2020.

Chierichini 2013 Fabris 1993 Leon 2013

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Artikeltext 248622 1 10 20230413

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Artikeltext 248622 1 10 20230413

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Ana Gonçalves Magalhães The Italian Art World and

São Paulo Museum Collections in the

RJBH Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 44 | 2019/ 2020

The Italian Artworks at MASP: The Tintorettos and the Activities of

12 See Pozzoli 2013.

Dearest friend, the best of BBs.

48 See Marques 1998.

A Collection of Novecento Italiano for the São Paulo MAM.70

[A]rtistically, it [MAM] had Italian paintings that

Dégand spares Modigliani’s Autoritratto (or Self-­Portrait,

June 18, 1946

In Tosi’s answer, he insists on the sale of a still life and a landscape:

5 Arturo Tosi, Paesaggio di Val Seriana

95 On Cagli and his connections with Bardi, see Bedarida 2018.

In Alberto della Ragione’s activities of buying and selling artworks, he seems

106 See Caputo 2020.

Chierichini 2013 Fabris 1993 Leon 2013

You might also like

Dégand spares Modigliani’s Autoritratto (or Self-Portrait,