“I'm not worried, I found the painting in a house my mother bought and had it restored. Furthermore, like all 17th-century painters, Manetti made replicas of his works, and this person may have owned a late copy of it. “It was stolen is a possible thing.” The Undersecretary of State for Culture, Vittori Sgarbi, returns on the sidelines of a meeting in Genoa back to the painting
“The Capture of Saint Peter” by Rutilio Manetti, which according to the report program is a work stolen from a castle in Piedmont in 2013. “I'll show you something new,” Sgarbi adds, showing the journalists photos of two of Manetti's paintings from his cell phone. “This is a painting that is in a church in Siena, while this other, identical painting is in a private collection.” The only difference is
the light, like in my painting, and this shows that Manetti had the idea that two paintings could be invented with the same subject and different settings. If I have to argue about explaining that there are nine versions of Caravaggio's Maddalena and dozens of versions of Mattia Preti, I am saying what is obvious: that there are two paintings by the same author is a normal thing in 17th century painting .” (Video report by Fabrizio Cerignale)
