A painting is at the centre of a court battle between an art lover and the Italian government. The ‘Madonna and Child’ by Giotto is believed to be worth £10million
Italy has launched a legal battle for a £10 million masterpiece by Giotto, which is currently in storage in London.
Kathleen Simonis has been accused of ‘spiriting’ the painting dated 1297 overseas to Britain.
She is now facing a High Court bid by the Italian authorities to get the ‘Madonna and Child’ by the Medieval master, back.
The Italian ministry of culture says she had no valid licence to export the painting more than ten year ago, which is currently in storage in London.
Ben Jaffey QC, representing the ministry, told Mrs Justice Carr today: ‘Ms Simonis spirited the painting out of Italy.’
The barrister said Ms Simonis paid a mere 8 million lira – around £3,500 – for the painting at auction in 1990.
It was then viewed as a 19th century painting by a Giotto imitator and was described as a ‘panel painting from the 1800s’.
But, during restoration work in the 1990s, layers of paint were removed to reveal the work of the Florentine master, who died in 1337.
It has since been attributed to Giotto – or at least ‘his school’ – and is now valued at around £10 million.
The court heard the painting has made several trips abroad since Ms Simonis bought it.
But, on its return to Italy in 1999, an inspection revealed its ‘extraordinary pictorial quality’ and ‘excellent state of preservation’.
Since then the painting has been the subject of extensive litigation in the Italian courts.
In February 2007, Ms Simonis’s lawyers informed the Italian authorities she had dispatched it to London.
Ms Simonis has since applied to Arts Council England for a licence to export the painting out of the EU, but that was refused in 2015.
Mr Jaffey said Ms Simonis had in 1999 been granted a temporary, five-year, licence that allowed her to export the painting, but that expired in 2004.
But Aidan O’Neill QC, for Ms Simonis, argued that the fact the licence was no longer valid when she sent the painting to London made no difference to her rights.
The case has reached the High Court after a woman named Kathleen Simonis brought the painting to storage in London
Her entitlement to export it had been ‘automatically extended’ by an Italian court judgment then in force, he said.
And, after the licence expired, the Italian authorities had in any event been ‘obliged’ to renew it, he argued.
He added: ‘As a matter of directly effective EU law, she has a right to transfer her property from one member state to another. That is in the very DNA of EU law.’
The Italian authorities’ stance that the export to London on a BA flight was ‘unlawful’ was ‘incompatible with EU law’, he told the judge.
Mr Jaffey responded: ‘The painting is currently in storage in London. It is here because Ms Simonis spirited it out of Italy…
‘She did not tell the Italian cultural authorities about her plan to remove the painting until after it had arrived in London.
‘A reasonable person would have been aware that Ms Simonis’s removal of the painting from Italy involved considerable legal risk.’
He added that Arts Council England only has power to sanction the painting’s export outside the EU if it was ‘lawfully despatched’ from Italy to the UK in the first place.
The hearing continues.