Was this unknown man Italy’s greatest collector?
By Anna Somers Cocks | 7 September 2015
Federico Cerruti died [on July 15, aged 93] with a treasure-filled house in which he had slept only one night
Every Sunday, an unremarkable-looking man, in his usual dark-blue suit and white shirt, drove an unremarkable car to an unremarkable house in the outskirts of Turin and sat down to lunch, served by his faithful housekeeper Marcellina, in a porticoed room full of orchids. He might have chosen to sit in his dining room with its ten Metaphysical De Chiricos, but he liked to be with the flowers.
He loved beauty, and every room was rich in masterpieces he had bought over nearly 70 years from auction catalogues and by just waiting for the art world to come to him. They were his family, his friends, his only raison d’être apart from his work.
Photograph of Federico Cerruti
Giorgio de Chirico, The Departure of the Argonauts (1921)
(Source: The Art Newspaper)