Now playing out in court.
If you like art scandal, meet the Wildenstein family....
The Inheritance Case That Could Unravel an Art Dynasty
How a widow’s legal fight against the Wildenstein family of France has threatened their storied collection — and revealed the underbelly of the global art market.
Even though Daniel described Georges as a “bad father,” he parented his own children in similarly severe ways. He enforced his father’s business tactics — extreme secrecy, consolidation of wealth in the bloodline — as laws of family life, too.
As children, Guy and Alec commuted to the Lycée Français de New York by limousine, and they rarely had a play date. Alec was forbidden to play sports and attend university, Guy was prevented from pursuing acting and both were required to learn their father’s trade. Daniel was particularly strict with Alec, his elder son. According to a 1998 Vanity Fair article, he started taking Alec to brothels at age 15 in the hope that he would find prostitutes a satisfying alternative to a wife.
According to a report by Art Basel and UBS, auction houses did about $31 billion in sales last year. They say that they know who their clients are, but those may just be the names of art advisers or other intermediaries. And collectors’ insistence on anonymity, long framed as genteel discretion, hasn’t budged. The buyer of the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction, Leonardo da Vinci’s $450.3 million “Salvator Mundi,” registered at Christie’s a day before bidding with a $100 million down payment, identifying himself as one of 5,000 princes in Saudi Arabia. A few weeks later, it was revealed that the true buyer was Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — who was reportedly displaying the painting on his superyacht — and that a little-known cousin of his bought it as a proxy. It was billed by Christie’s as the “last Leonardo da Vinci painting in private hands,” but it’s only the “last” Leonardo until someone reveals another one, like the Madonna and child the Wildensteins sold in 1999 to an anonymous collector, who is still believed to own it.
https://dnyuz.com/2023/08/23/the-inh...n-art-dynasty/
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